^m 




Ml 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

75Tiiol 

t + ._: ... ©fltwrnlji Sta 

7 



Shelf. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 





mm 



■ ft— — a- 



SEP 8 1885 












" 






SHORT TALKS 



TO 



YOUNG CHRISTIANS 



ON THE 



ZETVIIDEIsrOIES. 



BY 



iSil d 



REV. C. O. BROWN. 



CHICAGO: 

F. H. REVELL, 148 and 150 MADISON STREET, 

Publisher op Evangelical Literature, 



\ «• 






To the Young Christians, who first heard, and with 

manifest sympathy encouraged, these 

talks, they are now inscribed, 

with the affection of 

A PASTOR. 



The Library 
of Congress 

washington 



COPYRIGHT, 1885, BY F. H. REVELIi. 



PREFACE. 



These talks to young Christians on the Evidences con- 
stitute the first series of a plan which includes three, the 
other two being one on the Doctrines and one on the 
Moralities. They were begun and for some time continued 
without a serious thought of publication. A busy pastor 
found himself surrounded by a large company of young 
converts, whose emotional experiences were all that 
could be expected, but many of whom knew little about 
the intellectual basis of Christianity. Frequent services 
of a revival character, which were still in progress, sup- 
plied abundant fuel for their zeal, and as the revival con- 
tinued nearly five months with constant results, there was 
need of ballast lest the sails of zeal and emotion should 
carry too much wind. 

Moreover, there had been two attempts by enemies of 
the work to bring on a lecture from the modern apostle of 
infidelity. These attempts both failed. But rumor de- 
clared that he would come soon, and a local paper printed 
the blasphemy which he would have uttered, if a wise 
Providence had not fastened him into unsympathetic 
snow-drifts, sixty miles aw^ay. 

With the attention of young, and to a great extent un- 
informed, minds thus turned upon the utterances of an 
infidel, at a time when they were undergoing their first 
inner struggles with doubt, it seemed wise that some words 
of this sort should be spoken. 

There were several difficulties in the way of any plan 
to reach the wants of these converts. The audience, while 
composed mostly of young people from sixteen to twenty 



years of age, had in it a number of children and another 
number of persons of mature years, who, young in Chris- 
tian experience, were invariably present. Many were 
unaccustomed to study and some were well along in a 
college course. 

To meet the wants of all, the colloquial style which 
prevails was chosen. I have, purposely, avoided learned 
terms and abstract arguments. My only desire was to find 
a way to interest, and so inform, such a variously composed 
throng. The hope has been that those who came would 
get some of the outline facts of the Evidences and more 
than all that they would be incited to pursue in private 
study the thoughts thus aroused. 

The plan seems to have succeeded. The interest and 
attendance have been constant from the first. The period 
when depression and falling away usually begin among 
converts has gone by and the band is still unbroken, a fact 
which their pastor attributes in part, under divine grace, 
to the interest which they have manifested in these Tues- 
day evening talks; for there is among them a very percep- 
tible feeling of intellectual as well as spiritual assurance 
and an air of confidence in the fact that Christianity wel- 
comes the investigations of Reason no less than the devo- 
tions of Faith. 

It was not until the demand arose among these young 
Christians themselves, and not then until it had been 
seconded by various requests from brethren in the ministry, 
that publication was seriously considered. It is not 
claimed that there is here anything new unless it may be the 
method which has sought to adapt the facts to such list- 
eners. There is surely no pretence of literary excellence. 

Kalamazoo, July, 1885. CHAS " °- BROWN. 



CONTENTS. 

I. The Foundation . . . .7 

II. The Bible— How It Was Made . 21 

III. How the New Testament Developed . 39 

IV. "Why Do You Believe It?* . . 50 

V. I'll Tell You Why . . . .67 

VI. "The Jews, Your Majesty" . . 77 

VII. What Jesus Said and What Titus Did . 94 

VIII. One Bread Basket for Thousands of 

People . . . .110 

IX. What Has It Done for the World ? 120 

X. From a Naked Savage to a Cultured 

Prince ..... 136 

XI. Where Did Such Life and Character 

Come from ? . . . .149 



I. 

THE FOUNDATION. 



Gen. i., i. In the beginning, God. 

" #TN the beginning" of what? Try to an- 
cso) swer that. You will find yourselves 
going further and further back in your 
thought. You will go back past cities and 
villages till you find the land a wilderness 
grand in its solitude, and the mountains lift- 
ing their lofty summits of eternal snow un- 
seen by the eye of man. You will go back 
past the wilderness and the mountains and 
the seas, and you can think of a time when 
there was no sea, nor any mountains, nor 
any forest. You can come to a place in your 
thoughts where you are alone — where all 
human beings have deserted you — where 



8 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

there is no sound to relieve the ear, and no 
familiar sight to greet the eye, and no per- 
son to give you companionship. And yet 
you will not feel entirely alone. You can- 
not imagine that. Just as in your experi- 
ence you may have sometime been all alone 
in a great forest and have still felt that you 
were not alone; and you have felt oppressed 
by the very solitude because it seemed to 
bring you so near to an Unseen Being; or as 
when you have been alone in your chamber 
at midnight and could not feel alone ; op- 
pressed with solitude and yet feeling that 
another Being was there and knew every 
thought; so you cannot imagine yourself 
going back so far as to be entirely alone in 
the world. You can go back of the moun- 
tains and the seas, but you will still feel, 
although you may not distinctly think it, 
" Some Power made me, some Being caused 
my existence, and that Person is beholding 
me. I cannot be alone, for if I were alone 






THE FO UN DA TWIST. 9 

then I must have caused my own existence. 
But I know that I did not." So it is impos- 
sible for us to get beyond the thought of 
God. " In the beginning, God." In the 
beginning of what? In the beginning of 
everything. I can go back of the tree to 
the seed, and back of the seed to the chem- 
ical elements, but I can't go back of God. 
I can't think of a time when God was not. 
I cannot imagine things in any possible shape 
without God. " In the beginning, God." 
Try ever so hard, you can't get past that 
rocky bulwark. 

Many of you, perhaps all of you, have 
reached a point where you no longer try to 
get beyond God, or try to think that your- 
selves and everything else were made by 
nothing, and that there is no God. 

But you will meet those who talk that 
way. You will meet those who deny God's 
existence. Just think of the text, "In the 
beginning, God" and hold to that. As 



10 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS, 

long as you hold to that, you have an im- 
movable foundation. Think how utterly 
impossible it is to get beyond that thought. 
Men may argue and stir up a great deal of 
fog between us and that thought; but when 
the fog clears away, you will find that the 
fog was not a wall — you can go on a long 
way beyond the fog. I remember one time 
when we were marching in northern Ala- 
bama, we had in view a distant chain of 
mountains, so distant that they seemed with 
their soft outlines almost to blend with the 
clouds. And toward evening a mist arose 
parallel with the mountains, and in the dis- 
tance we could hardly tell which was which. 
In some places where the mist rose high 
enough it obscured the great, rocky hills, 
and we mistook it for the mountains them- 
selves. But we were constantly drawing 
nearer, and presently the sun came out with 
an evening glory, which lighted the whole 
scene. Then the mists lifted, and the moun- 



THE FOUNDATION. U 

tains stood out rugged and grand, every 
outline distinct. There was no longer any 
doubt which was fog and which was moun- 
tain. 

Men's arguments against God are like that. 
You mistake the fog for the mountain. You 
think you have reached the end in their talk, 
and can get along without God. But don't 
be so foolish. The slightest wind will blow 
that mist away. The mountain is beyond — 
grand, eternal, unchangeable it stands. "In 
the beginning, God," A fog may hide the 
mountain, but no fog can change it. After 
every fog has lifted you must reckon with 
the mountain, for your road leads straight 
up to the mountain. Through every mist at 
last you will come up to that Eternal Hill, 
and it will be well then if you can say, " I 
will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from 
whence cometh my help, My help cometh 
from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. " 
(Ps. cxxi., 1-2.) 



12 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

And when you think of it, why should 
anyone want to get rid of the thought of 
God? Why should anyone argue against 
the existence of God? Perhaps you and I 
have been wicked enough, at one time or 
another, to wish that there were no God 
in the universe. We, perhaps, would have 
been very comfortable to think that there 
was no God. 

Now, why is it that so many deliver lec- 
tures, and write books, and think out argu- 
ments, to prove that there is no God ; to 
make a great fog so as to hide the mountain? 
When they get their fog well started they 
cry out at the top of their voices, " There is 
no mountain, I can't see any mountain, and 
you are very foolish if you think that you 
can see any mountain." I stood on the 
shady side of my wood-shed the other morn 
ing as the sun was shining in all his glory. 
I could not see the sun. I could see only 
the wood-shed. Suppose I had called out 



THE FOUNDATION. 13 

to those who were passing and enjoying the 
sunshine and saying to each other what a 
bright morning it was, "You are very foolish 
for thinking that there is any sun. I can't 
see anything but a wood-shed. There isn't 
anything but a wood-shed, and they who 
refuse to believe in the wood-shed and insist 
on believing in the sun are very foolish!" 
Now, there are a great many whose talk 
about God is as reasonable as that. 

Some very wise people, in their way, are 
standing on the shady side of a few germs, 
and they say, " I can't see anything but the 
germs. There isn't any sun. You are fools 
for believing there is any God." 

But the people who were passing, covered 
and warmed by the rising sun, would have 
laughed at me and my wood-shed. So there 
are millions who by faith and a Christian ex- 
perience, are walking where the sunshine of 
God's love is pouring over them. They will 
pity and pray for any poor soul who tells 
them that there is nothing but a wood-shed 



14 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

instead of the sun, or a fog-bank instead of 
the mountain. They would laugh at him if 
the matter were less serious. " In the be- 
ginning, God. " There is the glorious Sun 
of Righteousness, which you will find after 
every wood-shed has been blown away. 

Well, why is it that so many can't bear the 
thought, " In the beginning, God ? " Is it 
because they think that they could manage 
affairs in anyway really better if God were 
not? Is it because they think that the 
mountains and the moon and the stars were 
really made without God ? No, that's not 
it, for what does it matter to those who hate 
the thought of God, how or by whom they 
were made? There they are, and they are 
the same in all of their glory and their utility 
whoever made them. Is it because anyone 
is really afraid that God will do any wrong 
to any being in the world? Has anyone 
really ever thought such a thing? No! no! 
No one ever really thought so. Many have 
wickedly accused God. In great sadness 



THE FOUNDATION. 15 

and grief, perhaps, they have uttered hard 
words against God. But they know, in their 
hearts, that those words were not true. They 
know that they will have to repent of those 
wicked thoughts and words toward the kind 
and good God. 

There is a clue which will help us to get 
at the reason why so many foolishly deny 
the existence of God. For, my friends, 
human hearts are in many particulars the 
same. Some sorrows are common to all; 
some things make everyone joyful. Sin pro- 
duces some effects which will be alike in all; 
and so righteousness will produce some ef- 
fects alike in all. Now we can look into our 
own hearts and find an answer to the ques- 
tion why the thought of God is so hateful 
and distressing to a great many. When was 
it that you first dreaded the thought of God? 
Or if you cannot think of the first time think 
of any time when the thought of God and 
His watchful eye looking through your very 
heart, was distressing to you; some time 



16 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

when you would have been very glad to be- 
lieve that there was no God. I have not 
asked any one of you, but I can tell you 
when. It was not when you had been doing 
something which your heart said was right, 
like feeding the hungry or clothingthe naked, 
or obeying God's law, but it was at some 
time when you had been doing that which 
your heart said was not right. The first 
time you ever thought of yourself as a sin- 
ner was such a time. It wasn't the doing of 
right but the doing of wrong that made the 
thought of God seem terrible. It was at 
such a time that you would have been very 
glad to look at some one's fog-bank instead 
of the mountains; at some one's wood-shed 
instead of the rising sun. 

And I have said human hearts are alike. 
Depend upon it young people, such experi- 
ences are the very causes which have led 
men, who are called learned or brilliant or 
scientific, to try in their books and lectures 
to stir up fog-banks, so that you cannot see 



THE FOUNDATION. 17 

the mountains, and to put up wood-sheds so 
that they cannot see the sun. Their hearts, 
with all of their learning, are not essentially 
different from yours and mine. They are 
not so good but that they have been con- 
scious that their hearts were sinful. When 
they knew that the thought of God was 
painful to them just as it was to you and 
me. I tell you plainly that the Apostle de- 
scribes their case exactly in one of his letters: 

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him 
not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in 
their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 

Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worship- 
ped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is 
blessed forever. 

And even as they did not like to retain God in their 
knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. 
(Rom. i., 21, 22, 25 and 28.) 

The same testimony within which tells us 
there is a God, tells us also that He is of 
purer eyes than to look upon iniquity. 
That's why a sinful heart hates the thought 
of God, and would gladly get rid of that 



18 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

thought if it could. But, "In the beginning, 
God" — there He stands. The mountain is 
there. We are journeying on toward the 
mountain. All are journeying. Some by 
a way where, with clear light and an open 
countenance, they see the mountain and re- 
joice in its grandeur. Others, surrounded 
by a mist, are journeying too. We are all 
journeying, for 

" Life is short, and time is fleeting, 

And our hearts, though strong and brave, 
Still, like muffled drums are beating 
Funeral marches to the grave." 

Some do not see the mountain. They 
deny that there is any mountain. But they 
are as surely journeying towards it as the 
others. They are in the wrong road — a road 
which will lead them up against the moun- 
tain, where there are only precipices, dark 
and frowning rocks and awful chasms. When 
they come to the mountain they will find 
that there is no way of ascent. God grant 
the mist may clear first. They themselves 



THE FOUNDATION. 19 

have made it. They themselves are respon- 
sible for it. But God grant it may clear. 
"In the beginning, God." My friends, do 
we accept that thought ? Do we gladly 
think of God, or do we try to think there is 
no God? 

If we do try to get rid of the thought of 
God that is a testimony that our hearts are 
sinful, for only sin desires to escape from 
the thought and the eye of God. Why did 
Belshazzar tremble when he saw the hand- 
writing on the wall ? He knew that God 
sent the hand, and he knew that he was a 
sinner. He was not at peace with God. 
Only sin dreads and tries to escape from 
God. 

Well, if that be the effect now; if the 
very thought of God is painful so that we 
try to escape from it when we are unrecon- 
ciled to God; if the effect is such that thou- 
sands write books and deliver arguments to 
try and believe their wish that there may be 



20 



TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 



no God, what will it be for one to stand un- 
reconciled in His presence ? No more com- 
fortable fog-banks then! All naked and 
open to the eyes of Him with whom we have 
to do! ■ 

What shall we do with hearts which even 
now try to escape the thought of God? 

There is only one way in the world where- 
by the sinner can think with pleasure that 
God is, and that His holy eye is upon him 
every moment. That is Christ. Christ is 
the way. Through his blood he destroyed 
the enmity and made peace. Many, many 
have recently found Christ, and in finding 
Christ they have found peace with God. 

•• Not all the blood of beasts, 

On Jewish altars slain, 
Could give the guilty conscience peace 

Or wash away the stain. 
But Christ, the heavenly Lamb, 

Takes all our sins away; 
A sacrifice of nobler name 

And richer blood than they." 



II. 

THE BIBLE— HOW IT WAS MADE. 



|NE of the difficulties which a young 
Christian sometimes meets is this : 
"How do I know that the Bible is really 
what it professes to be? How do I know 
that it shows me the way of duty and 
the way to heaven?" Sometimes such a 
question will come into the mind as a doubt. 
Sometimes it will be asked by some one who 
desires to get you into the dark. And I am 
very glad to devote this talk to answering 
such questions, because some of you have 
already been met by those who ask them; 
and perhaps you have been troubled because 
you could not answer to your own satisfac- 
tion, or theirs. 

Now, I don't suppose that your answer 
would do such persons very much good, for 



22 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

frequently they are cavillers and are dis- 
honest. There is a testimony in the heart 
which says that we ought to serve God, and 
they have not obeyed that voice of duty. 
So they are trying to find arguments against 
God's word to silence the voice of conscience. 
If they can ask you questions which you 
cannot answer they are greatly comforted, 
although it is no sign that they know any- 
thing about the subject. I have known a 
child three years old to ask questions which 
no wise man could answer. 

I have another reason for wishing to help 
you answer such questions. It is this: If 
such questions are asked, and you do not 
know the answer, it is likely to make you 
doubt in your own minds. You may begin 
to say: "I believe this is the word of God; 
but I can't tell why I believe it. Why 
should I believe it when I don't know any- 
thing about its history, how it was written, 
or when it was given to the world?" 



THE BIBLE— HOW IT WAS MADE. 23 

And, on the other hand, if you can give 
at once an intelligent reason for your faith, 
every time you do so that faith will be greatly 
strengthened. It will help you, and keep 
you from getting into doubt, although it 
may not help the objector, if you can give a 
reason for your faith. It is for your own 
sakes, therefore, to help you to be intelligent 
in these matters, and to keep you from 
doubt, that I try to help you answer such 
questions. And you know the apostle says 
"be ready always to give an answer to every 
man that asketh you, a reason of the hope 
that is in you." I. Pet. iii., 15. 

Some people talk as though we must be 
willing to shut our eyes, and take these 
statements as if we were blind, if we would 
be Christians. On the contrary, our Lord 
would have us open our eyes and look at 
facts intelligently. He would help us to see, 
as He opened the eyes of the blind men who 
came to Him. Ignorance in reference to 



24 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

these things is alone to be dreaded. The 
more we know of these facts the more reason 
will we have to cling to our blessed Bible — 
the more shall we see that it is the very word 
of God to man. 

I remember very well how these things 
appeared to me shortly after my conversion. 
I did not doubt the truth of God's word; I 
did not doubt that it was inspired — I ac- 
cepted it. But I had never given any atten- 
tion to these things, and I had no intelligent 
notion of how God gave the Bible to the 
world. If I had been asked why I accepted 
it, I could only have said, "I have an inner 
conviction that it is true/' I had an indefi- 
nite idea that somehow God wrote it, or told 
men how to write it, and then handed it, 
ready-made to the world. If any infidel had 
encountered me with questions about these 
things I should have been in the dark at once. 
I long felt the need of such help as I shall 
try to give you here to-night. 



THE BIBLE— HOW IT WAS MADE. 25 

Of course, I can't give you a complete 
history of the Bible in twenty minutes. That 
would require volumes. But I want to give 
you a few facts which may be easily remem- 
bered, and one argument for the truth of the 
Old Testament which seems to me sufficient 
for every honest mind. 

And first, we must remember that this 
Bible did not come straight from the hands 
of God as we have it now — all in one large 
volume. I heard the other day of a young 
man who thought he knew all about the 
matter, who was telling, out of his abundant 
wisdom, that thousands of years ago there 
were many sacred books; that the Bible was 
only one of them, and that the people got 
together and chose which should be the 
sacred book of the people! And so the 
Bible was chosen by a kind of vote, instead 
of some other sacred book, and that is how 
it happens to have so much influence to-day! 

Such talk as that only reveals the depth 
of its author's ignorance. It shows that he 



26 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

knows nothing about the way in which the 
Bible originated. Besides that, we are to 
remember that no such process could give 
the Bible or any other book influence. Any 
book will have just such influence as its 
merit can command. If a new book of 
poems is issued it may have a few readers 
at first out of curiosity; but if it is published 
and republished for centuries, it will be 
because there is some genuine merit in it. 

So the Bible has a wider influence through- 
out the world than any other book. That 
influence lasts and keeps on growing from 
generation to generation, and from century 
to century, through thousands of years. No 
vote or choice of any body of people a 
thousand or two thousand years ago could 
give the book any influence now. The 
only reason why that influence continues 
longer and spreads more widely than that 
of any other book in the world is that 
the Bible has a great value which no 



THE BIBLE— HOW IT WAS MADE. 27 

other book in the world ever had. If 
it had not its influence could not continue 
to spread as it does. The doctrine of inspi- 
ration would not help it any if it had not a 
great and genuine value. If the Bible did 
not do for the world what it professes, if it 
did not make people better, if it did not 
comfort the sorrowing, encourage the weak, 
and lift up the fallen; if it did not change 
people for the better, no doctrine of inspira- 
tion would help it. People would very soon 
find out that it was a fraud, and would let it 
alone. It would have been forgotten ages 
ago. There wouldn't have been any need 
of translators and printing presses to help 
circulate the Bible in every language of the 
world to-day. It is because people find 
that the Bible does help them that they want 
it and keep on demanding it. It helps men 
and women to reform their lives and gives 
them hope of heaven; it points out how 
people can have peace with God, and how we 



28 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIAN'S. 

can stand with joy in His presence. There- 
fore it is that people keep on demanding it. 

People see that wherever the Bible has 
gone, there things are changed for the better. 
Once, as you know, our mother country, 
England, was inhabited by barbarians, half- 
naked savages, who slew each other for 
human offerings to their idols. The Bible 
was taken to the British Isles. Its truths 
were preached there, and all the barbarisms 
were changed to what we see at present. At 
one time Britain was as barbarous as Central 
Africa is to-day. The Bible has only begun 
to be carried into the center of Africa, and 
has only begun to influence a few tribes, so 
they are barbarians there still. The same 
change goes everywhere with the Bible. 
The Sandwich Islands and the Micronesian 
Islands have been and are being changed in 
the same way by the Bible. 

Now, it is because people see these great 
changes going on by means of the Bible that 



THE BIBLE— HOW IT WAS MADE. 29 

they love it. They see changes in indi- 
viduals, in families, and in nations. Where- 
ever the Bible has not come there you find 
people at best only part civilized. Where- 
ever it has been received, there you find 
them at the front. It is because the Bible 
has in it something which does the great 
work of changing and comforting human 
hearts that people love it the world around. 
No other book ever written has had the 
power to change men. Remember that, 
young people, when some one asks you why 
you love the Bible. It isn't some vote of 
some body of men hundreds of years ago, 
nor alone because of the belief in inspiration, 
that people love the Bible, but because it 
satisfies their souls and reforms their lives as 
no other book, 

If some one were to come with a medicine 
which he should claim was inspired, and if 
every one who took the medicine should 
die, people wouldn't keep on taking the 



30 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

medicine, no matter how many should claim 
that it was inspired. But if they should find 
that the medicine was a sure cure; that it 
really did what was claimed for every one 
who took it, they would keep on taking it. 
So people love the Bible and keep on study- 
ing it, because it does for the world just 
what it professes. You can know how much 
attention to pay to those who say that the 
Bible is kept before the people because of 
its claim to be inspired. We do believe it 
is inspired, but what makes us believe it? 
Would we keep on believing it inspired if it 
should deceive us in matters which we test 
daily? 

And there are ways in which we can 
tell in this life whether it deceives or not. 
By its fruits we know. It says that wher- 
ever it goes there will be light. Is that 
true? Have the nations where it has gone 
been made better or worse by it? There is 
our answer. Point to the fruits. Ask why 



THE BIBLE— HOW IT WAS MADE. 31 

it is that so many millions keep on reading 
the Bible. Ask why it is that every nation 
where it has gone has been made better by 
it. Ask whether millions upon millions — 
among them the best scholars in the world 
— could be deceived into thinking that the 
Bible makes them better if it did not really 
make them better. 

But I was to tell you how the Bible came 
into the world. It did not come all at one 
time. It was not written by the hand of 
God and then put into the hands of men; 
but it was a growth, according to the needs 
of the people. It was written in different 
parts or books, by different men, in different 
ages of the history of God's people. The 
different men who were called of God to 
write the different parts of the Old Testa- 
ment were chosen from time to time during 
more than a thousand years. Moses was 
the first. He wrote the first five books of 
the Old Testament about one thousand four 



32 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

hundred and fifty years before Christ. 
Malachi, the last of the Old Testament 
prophets, was inspired to write out his 
prophecy about four hundred years before 
Christ. So you see we have the books of 
the Old Testament written during a period 
of a thousand years by numerous persons, 
scattered all the way through that long 
period. 

To illustrate: When the children of Israel 
came out of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea 
there was no written Bible. But God was 
then calling them to do a great work as His 
people, and the things about to happen — 
God's wonderful revelation on Mount Sinai, 
and his providences in crossing the sea and 
in the wilderness — would be of great conse- 
quence to all the ages following. So Moses was 
inspired to make a record of all those things. 
He went up into the mount and there talked 
with God, and God gave htm there His holy 
law. Well, when that record of the journey 



THE BIBLE— HOW IT WAS MADE. 33 

out of Egypt and through the wilderness was 
written, the people had one book of the 
Bible — Exodus. The meaning of that word 
is going out from. The book of Exodus is 
the inspired history of the Israelites going 
out from Egypt. In the same connection, 
directed also by the inspiring Spirit of God, 
Moses wrote out the history of the beginning 
of the world, and the people received that 
book in written form at or nearly the same 
time. Genesis means beginning. The book 
of Genesis is the inspired history of the be- 
ginning of the world. 

So also, when Moses had written out a 
full account of the law given him by Almighty 
God in the mount, there was another book 
of the Bible — Leviticus. The things revealed 
in that book related principally to the Levites 
and priests, and so it is named Leviticus. 
Then comes the book of Numbers, which 
takes its name from the numbering of the 
tribes. The book of Joshua comes a few 



34 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

years later, and is the inspired record of 
what the Israelites did by divine guidance, 
under the leadership of Joshua. So an ex- 
planation could be given of the circumstan- 
ces under which every one of the books of 
the Old Testament was written. 

The prophets did not all prophecy at one 
time. God sent one at one time and another 
at another time, and they were instructed 
by inspiration to write out the things which 
were shown them by the revealing Spirit. 
Isaiah, for instance, living about seven hun- 
dred and fifty years before Christ, was shown 
by the revealing Spirit of God, some things 
which were to happen to the Israelites very 
soon and other things which should happen 
hundreds of years after. He described the 
life and death of Christ in that wonder- 
ful fifty-third chapter more than seven hun- 
dred years before Christ came. And he 
described his life, work, and death almost as 
minutely as he could have done if he hacj 






THE BIBLE— HOW IT WAS MADE. 35 

lived in Jerusalem when Christ suffered and 
died there. 

So of the other prophets. Each had his 
time and place and circumstances when he 
wrote and spoke by divine guidance. Daniel 
prophesied and wrote down his prophesies 
in and near the great city of Babylon over 
five hundred years before Christ. You know 
he was one of the Jewish captives who had 
been carried away from Jerusalem with 
thousands of others. God chose him as the 
great prophet and religious teacher of those 
captives. Ezekiel was another who pro- 
phesied still earlier among them. All of 
these books were written out from time to 
time, by divine direction, to help the re- 
ligious life of the people. Most of the pro- 
phesies were both uttered and written by the 
prophets. 

You may ask how the people knew whether 
these men were inspired. It would be enough 
for us to know that the divine authority of 



36 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

the books of the Old Testament was never 
questioned by the Jews. They had all of the 
reasons which the natural heart can invent 
for desiring to escape from the authority of 
the prophets. Sin was as tempting then as 
now. Moreover, they had right at hand the 
means of investigating every claim. There 
w r ere frequent times of apostasy when they 
would have overthrown the authority of the 
Scriptures if they could. In one age they 
could look up to the mount where God, 
amid thunder and lightning, spoke to Moses; 
at another time God opened the sea and 
again the river for them. Then, again, they 
could see the signs of his presence in the 
pillar of cloud and of fire. They surely 
would not have any occasion to doubt that 
the things spoken by Moses, whom God 
called to go up into the cloud, were really 
God's will. 

So, during the time of the prophets, there 
were ways of testing the word spoken. The 



THE BIBLE— HOW IT WAS MADE. 37 

prophets foretold some things which were 
hundreds of years in the future, and they 
foretold others that would happen in a sin- 
gle generation, so that hundreds then living 
could test the matter. Sometimes the things 
which they foretold, as in some of Jeremiah's 
prophesies, happened only a few months 
after. And these were facts which no man 
could have foreseen unless God by his Spirit 
revealed them unto the prophet. 

When the faithful Jew saw that God's 
Spirit was with a man, and that the things 
foretold were actually coming to pass, he 
knew that God was speaking through that 
man. He knew that the things spoken in 
reference to the distant future were also 
from God. So these various books, having 
all been spoken and then written, were care- 
fully gathered into one volume. That was 
done nearly or quite four hundred years 
before Christ came. So that the Old Tes- 
tament Scriptures were the same as we have 
now when Christ came to the earth. 



38 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

Now, it becomes a most interesting thing 
to notice how the Savior of the world treated 
the Scriptures. If there had been anything 
wrong about them he would surely have said 
so plainly. But instead we find him quoting 
from them and referring to them as the sacred 
words of God again and again. And then 
he said plainly, ''Search the Scriptures; for 
in them, ye think ye have eternal life, and 
they are they which testify of me. " This is 
Christ's positive endorsement of the whole 
Old Testament Scriptures. I will tell you 
in a future talk how the books of the New 
Testament were also written, by divine in- 
spiration, and how the whole Bible came 
together, by divine providence, into the form 
of the volume which we now have. There 
is a way in which we may know, just as we 
know any other facts, that the Bible is truly 
from God — His inspired book. And I shall 
tell you of that in future talks. 



III. 

HOW THE NEW TESTAMENT 
DEVELOPED. 



E have seen how the Old Testament 
-n^^ was a growth; how its different books 
were given by inspiration, one after another, 
according to the needs of God's people, 
through more than a thousand years. This 
evening we will look for a little time at the 
way in which God gave the New Testament 
to the world. 

For nearly four hundred years, after the 
last of the prophets, Malachi, the world had 
been without any person inspired to add 
anything to the sacred volume. The Old 
Testament was complete. Its prophecies of 
glories to be revealed had been uttered and 
were waiting for fulfillment. Then came 
Christ. Out of His perfect life was to grow 



40 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

another and final portion of the inspired 
book, more precious than all which had pre- 
ceded it, because a clearer and more com- 
plete revelation of God's will. It was to be 
that portion of the divine word which should 
inspire future saints to sing: 

"My dear Redeemer and my Lord, 
I read my duty in Thy word; 
But in Thy life the law appears, 
Drawn out in living characters." 

The New Testament is the mirror in which 
we behold the life of Christ reflected. In 
that we see divine law living and moving in 
divine love. 

But the New Testament did not come com- 
plete in its present form from the hand of 
God. Like the Old Testament it was a 
growth, controlled by divine inspiration. 

Christ Jesus lived His beautiful life, and 
spoke His undying words into the ears and 
hearts of His disciples and the common 
throng. Then, when all things were ful- 



NE W TES TAME NT DE VEL OPED. 4 1 

filled according to the Law and Prophets, 
He went away again into His home of light. 
The only words, which there is any record 
of His ever writing, He wrote on the ground. 
He left not a volume ; He inscribed no 
monument ; and yet he was bold enough 
to declare: "Heaven and earth shall pass 
away; but my words shall never pass away." 
Cities and empires have gone down since 
then; but the words of Christ, not one of 
which was then written, still remain. No 
other teacher ever dared to assert that his 
words would endure forever; or, if he did, 
he was instantly judged to be insane. But 
Christ spake with the composure and assur- 
ance of One who saw all the future and who 
knew all the past. He saw distant ages and 
mighty empires, whose gentle civilizations 
and whose humane laws should be molded 
by His words. He spake as One seeing the 
invisible. We live, young people, in the 
midst of the things about which He spake. 



42 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

We are here to-night to talk about the book 
which contains the words of Christ. We 
live in an age whose world-wide charities 
and whose mighty reforms of hoary abuses 
have all sprung from the words of Christ. 
Was he not in very deed a Prophet? 

For several years after the crucifixion the 
apostles preached Christ and quoted His 
w r ords from the loving memories of their 
hearts. We cannot tell just how long it was 
before the first part of the New Testament 
was written out. The things which we know 
with certainty make that a matter of small 
consequence. As I shall explain to you in 
a future talk, we know with certainty that 
nearly or quite all of the New Testament was 
written before the close of the first century. 
We know with equal certainty that at least 
three of the Gospels were written before the 
destruction of Jerusalem. These facts are 
quite sufficient, when taken in connection 
with others which I shall mention, to make 



NE IV TES TAME NT DE VEL OPED. 43 

it certain that God must have had something 
to do with the making of the book. Written 
at so early a date, it must have told the 
truth or thousands would have risen up to 
deny it. There were no denials for a cen- 
tury or more. But, if it is true, then it is 
divine. I shall speak of that more fully 
hereafter. 

It may be that the Divine Spirit came in 
the way of an entirely natural suggestion to 
Matthew, saying to him, " Matthew, why 
don't you write out these precious memories 
which are now so fresh in your mind? Future 
generations will worship Him whom you 
call * Master.' Give them a picture of His 
life and a record of His words." Then when 
the apostle began to write, that Spirit which 
Christ had promised, brought perfectly to 
his memory the words and deeds which he 
wished to record. When Matthew had 
written, if he was, as is supposed, the first 
to publish the story of Jesus, the world had 



44 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

the first portrait of a perfect character which 
had ever been contributed to its literature. 

Then, perhaps, next in the order of time, 
follows the account, or, as we call it, the 
Gospel of Mark. Mark was not one of the 
twelve, but he was the friend and companion 
of Peter. When he wrote he had in mind, 
doubtless, many facts and precious memories 
to which he had so often heard his illustrious 
and inspired friend refer. Probably he had 
at his call the human help which Peter could 
render, as well as the higher assistance of 
the Divine Spirit. 

Thus, one after another, at different times 
and in widely different places, the four gos- 
pels were published to the world. Matthew's 
gospel was, probably, first published in Pal- 
estine; Mark's, perhaps, and even, probably, 
in Rome; Luke's in Achaia or Asia Minor, 
and John's at Ephesus. 

In these different accounts we see not only 
how the same events impressed different 



NEW TES TAME NT BE VEL OPED. 45 

minds; and how each was led to record 
some things not recorded by the others; but, 
above all, we see how every mind received 
the same overwhelming impression of 
Christ's perfect character. Four travelers 
may give accounts of some grand mountain. 
One approaches it from the north, and he 
gives us an account of its sterner aspect. 
Another sees it from the south, and behold! 
it is covered with warmth and sunshine. The 
others tell each his story, and in each there 
is something both new and true ; but, in one 
respect they will give the same impression: 
They will all tell us how lofty and how grand 
the mountain is. Such are the four different 
accounts of Christ's life. 

Each of these writers records certain words 
in which the Lord sent the apostles forth to 
preach and, assured them that they should 
have very remarkable power. They should 
be able to work miracles; they should be 
miraculously protected in certain respects 



46 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

from bodily harm; they should preach with 
irresistible power, and they should have 
given them what they should say when they 
were suddenly called before rulers for Christ's 
sake. 

The years went by. The apostles went 
forth and preached in different cities through 
the empire. They obeyed their Lord. Did 
He keep His word with them? Were they 
able to work miracles? Was their preach- 
ing successful ? 

The time came, after a few years, when it 
could be said to the apostles, as Joshua had 
said to the Israelites centuries before: " Not 
one thing hath failed of all the good things 
which the Lord your God spake concerning 
you; all are come to pass unto you, and not 
one thing hath failed thereof. " 

It was interesting and important that the 
record of their deeds should be preserved 
for the Church of the future. So the Lord 
put it into the heart of Luke to write The 



NEW TESTAMENT DEVELOPED. 47 

Acts of the Apostles. Thus another book of 
the New Testament was written. 

As churches multiplied they needed in- 
struction and encouragement. But the in- 
spired apostles could not be present with 
them all in person. Hence they wrote let- 
ters, advising in their difficulties and illus- 
trating the doctrines of the gospel. These 
letters or epistles were added one after 
another to the volume of sacred truth. 

Thus one book of the New Testament 
after another was given to the world, until 
all of its parts, in the common manuscript 
form of those days, were widely circulated. 

In time, the Churches were interested to 
collect these various parts of the sacred writ- 
ings into one complete volume. Justin 
Martyr, who was a disciple of the apostle 
John, in his letter to the emperor, mentions 
a custom of reading from parts of the New 
Testament, which had become general as 
early as the year 140. To establish such a 



48 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

custom may have required thirty or forty 
years. This takes us back to the time of the 
apostle John. Thus, during the last years 
of this apostle's life, the practice of reading 
from the New Testament publicly as a part 
of divine service had probably begun. At 
all events the evidence is abundant that the 
separate books of the New Testament were 
early collected into their present form. Com- 
mentaries and gospel harmonies were written, 
and translations of them into different lan- 
guages were made, in the primitive ages of 
Christianity. Origen, one of the Church 
fathers, living only eighty-five years after 
Saint John, gives, from separate sources, 
twelve different lists of books of the New 
Testament, all of course made prior to that 
time. They had been prepared by repre- 
sentative councils of the Church or by emi- 
nent scholars in different parts of the empire. 
Thus early was God's Word recognized in 
its completeness and its authority reverenced. 



NEW TESTAMENT DEVELOPED. 49 

Thus, my friends, we have seen, in merest 
outline, how God's Word, both of the Old 
and New Testaments, grew up, one part 
after another, as He unfolded His purposes 
of mercy and kindness, first to His ancient 
people and through them to us all. Like the 
opening of some beautiful flower, was this 
unfolding of the thoughts of our Father's 
heart — each stage of it beautiful and frag- 
rant, each more beautiful and more fragrant 
than the one before, 'till the full glory was 
displayed, and the fragrance began to fill 
the world. 



IV. 

" WHY DO YOU BELIEVE IT? " 



^'TPHERE is nothing like a ready knowl- 
$Ml edge of the Word of God to help a 
young Christian in the temptations which 
are sure to come. It is well to carry a copy 
of it with you whenever you can. You will 
find spare minutes during the day when you 
can look into it, and the verse which you 
catch will help you. I am happy to see the 
habit which you are forming of having your 
Bibles with you. 

It is because I esteem the Bible so essen- 
tial to your Christian life that I wish you to 
have an intelligent faith in it — a faith which 
no question of any infidel can overturn. I 
want you to be able to give a reason for 
your faith in God's holy Word. If you go 
to it in your trials; if you prayerfully seek 



" WHY DO YOU BELIEVE IT?" 51 

guidance and help in God's Word, you will 
have the very strongest reason for faith 
which could be given to your own soul. 
You will find there the help which you need. 
If my wagon is stuck in the mud and some 
strong man helps me lift it out, I don't need 
anything else to satisfy me that he is a strong 
man. If I am in the dark and someone 
brings a light, I don't need any argument to 
show me that he is just the friend I need at 
such a time. 

Well, God's Word is just like that, " The 
entrance of Thy Word giveth light. " It will 
help us when we are stuck in the mud, as 
poor Christian was in the story, you remem- 
ber. It will bring us light when we are in 
darkness. O! learn, my friends, to go straight 
to the Word of God in every difficulty. My 
hope for any young Christian is in propor- 
tion as he or she loves the Word of God. 

Does any question of the Christian life 
come up? Take it to the Word of God. 



£2 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

Any temptation? Go to the Word. And 
in the Word you will find a promise which 
you can plead in prayer, or a rule which you 
can apply in your life. And when God's 
Word has helped you in that way, you will 
feel " strong in the Lord and in the power of 
His might. " 

But, in some hour of darkness, when you 
are least prepared for it, temptation may 
come in this way, " Now, how do you know 
this is God's Word? It was not revealed to 
you: how do you know that it is inspired at 
all? How do you know but that it was 
written by someone a thousand years after 
Christ? How do you know it is as ancient 
as it professes to be? How do you know 
that the things written in it are true?" 

When such temptations come, breathe a 
prayer that God may help you. Remember 
how God's Word has helped you in times of 
darkness before. Remember that it helped 
you when all human help failed. 



"WHY DO YOU BELIEVE IT?" 53 

But it is reasonable that you should under- 
stand that we can know that the things 
spoken in the Bible are true, just the same 
as we can know any truths of history. If 
you ever spend time in investigating you 
will very soon become satisfied that the 
truths of the Bible can be more fully proven 
than almost any other historic truths. 

Let me illustrate: We know that such a 
man as Socrates lived in Greece. No one 
doubts that; no one denies it. But there is 
more proof that Jesus Christ lived and was 
crucified by the Jews, than there is that Soc- 
rates lived in Athens and was poisoned by 
the rulers of that city. The proof that I now 
speak of is entirely aside from the Bible. 
The fact can be established just as we estab- 
lish any other historic fact, by investigating 
the writings and the testimony of those who 
lived at that time. There were Roman his- 
torians, who lived at, or not long after that 
time, and they speak of the life and death of 



54 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

Christ. There was Josephus, who wrote at 
length of many of the facts connected with 
the life, death, and especially the words of 
Christ. Josephus was a Jew. He was born 
only a few years after the crucifixion of 
Christ and wrote about forty years later. 

I told you in a previous chapter how 
the Old Testament Scriptures were written 
by many authors from the time of Moses, 
onward, through a thousand years, and 
how the sacred writings then stopped with 
Malachi, nearly four hundred years before 
Christ came to earth. I showed you that 
the Jews had the Old Testament, complete, 
before the coming of Christ. Then I read 
you those words of Christ in which He 
commands us to " Search the Scriptures," 
showing that he regarded them all as divine 
in their authority. He proved His own Mes- 
siahship — that he was the very Christ — by 
referring again and again to the Old Testa- 
ment. 



"WHY DO YOU BELIEVE IT?" 56 

On the authority of Christ, therefore, we 
know that the Old Testament is inspired and 
holy. There are other ways by which we 
know the same thing, but I want to get this 
way clearly before you so that you will 
never forget it ; so that you can recall it in 
a moment if any disputer assails the Old 
Testament. Say to him, " My Lord and 
Savior, Christ, endorsed the Old Testament, 
and tells me to search it as a guide to eternal 
life, and that's enough for me." You hold 
that by the whole authority of the word of 
Christ. 

But suppose he should ask: " How do 
you know that the word of Christ amounts 
to anything ? " Well, young people and 
friends, I would answer that, first of all, by 
saying, " I know it by what Christ has done 
for me. I know it because I was a sinner, 
condemned by God's law, and He took away 
my burden and forgave my sins. You obey 
Him and you will know as well as I. " That's 



56 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS, 

as far as it will pay to go with one who 
denies and cavils at the word of Christ. 

But, for your own sakes and your own in- 
struction and help, I say to you there is an 
answer to every such question which will 
satisfy any honest mind ; an answer which 
can be understood just as we understand a 
fact in history or geography. We know 
Christ's authority by the New Testament. 

What Nicodemus said is evidently true. 
No man could do such works as Christ did 
"except God were with him." We know, 
therefore, that he was a Teacher who came 
from God; for no one could raise the dead 
and heal the blind unless the power of God 
were with him. We know that God wouldn't 
help any man, nor send any man into the 
world, to tell lies. But we know that God 
was in Christ, helping him, or he couldn't 
have raised the dead. Therefore we know 
that every word which Christ spoke was 
true; because it had that wonderful testi- 



" WHY DO YOU BELIE VE IT ?* 57 

mony : He was able to raise the dead. Now, 
what do we know? Why, Christ declares 
again and again that He is the world's Re- 
deemer. He declares that He is the Son of 
God; that He has a divine nature; that He 
and the Father are one ; that all things, both 
in heaven and earth, are under His control. 

His word is established by His power to 
work miracles and, His Word declares that 
He is divine. That's all we want to know 
about His authority. When we reach that 
point we are ready to fall at his feet, as 
Thomas did, and say, " My Lord and my 
God." 

When he sends us to the Scriptures we 
know that they are inspired, for He, himself, 
is God who inspired them. He wouldn't send 
us to any Scriptures which are not inspired. 

It's a good thing, friends, for us to go 
where Christ sends us. We shall be better 
each time we search the Scriptures with 
honest and prayerful hearts. 



58 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

But now you ask, for your own intelli- 
gence and satisfaction, "How do I know 
that the New Testament is what it pretends 
to be? You have shown me, beyond doubt, 
one unanswerable reason for knowing that 
the Old Testament is inspired; but how may 
I kn ;.v intelligently that the New Testament 
is inspired? I perceive at once that every- 
thing depends on that; for the New Tes- 
tament contains the life of Christ, and, 
according to our present argument, the in- 
spiration of the Old Testament depends on 
the word of Christ." 

If you will follow me, I will try to tell 
you how we know these things. But we 
can, I think, get at the answer to all by 
answering another question. 

Suppose you should ask me, "How may 
I know but the New Testament was written 
only three or four hundred years ago?" It 
claims to have been written eighteen hun- 
dred years ago or more. If it were written 



44 WHY DO YOU BELIEVE IT?" 59 

by some person or persons only three or five 
or eight hundred years ago, then, of course, 
it is not reliable. But if, on the contrary, 
we can find to a certainty that it was written 
when it professes, then it is a strong reason, 
though not the only one, for believing that 
it is true. For nobody could publish such 
things as the stories contained in the New 
Testament and send them successfully all 
over the Roman Empire, if they were false; 
because thousands of persons would rise up 
and say, "That's not true; I was at Jeru- 
salem at the Passover, and there was no such 
crucifixion. I was at Jerusalem, and that's 
not true; that person called Jesus did not 
rise up from the sepulchre." And another 
would say, ' 4 That's false; I was at Bethany, 
and Lazarus was not raised from the dead. " 
Another would say, "I lived in Galilee, near 
Lake Gennesaret, and I never heard about 
Jesus feeding over five thousand people with 
a few loaves before. " And another would 



60 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIAN'S. 

say, " That book called i Acts of the 
Apostles' is not true, for I was at Cesarea 
at the time mentioned, and there wasn't any 
prisoner there by the name of Paul, and 
there wasn't any speech-making before Felix 
and Agrippa. I'm sure I should have heard 
something about it if such a noted prisoner 
had been there over two years. " 

So it would be all through the Roman 
world, for the New Testament tells of things 
which happened in Ephesus and Philippi, 
Thessalonica, Corinth, and Athens, and 
Rome itself. 

Don't you see if any book had been cir- 
culated in those cities, while those men were 
still living, they would at once deny its 
statements if they were untrue? And there 
were a great many learned men who were 
capable of writing against the New Testa- 
ment. So if it were not true we should cer- 
tainly find a great many books written 
against it by those men who must have been 



" WHY DO YOU BELIEVE IT?" 61 

alive at the time; for many of them were 
enemies of Christianity, and would surely 
have denied if they could. Do you not see 
how that must be true? We find many 
books and fragments of books written at 
that time, but not one denying the New 
Testament till more than a century later. 
After all of the people of that generation 
were dead, then the denials began. Why 
didn't hundreds and thousands rise up when 
the New Testament was first circulated, and 
deny what it claimed? There were more 
than a million in Jerusalem at the time when 
it claims Christ was crucified. Why didn't 
some of them afterwards dispute the record? 
Why didn't some one deny the miracles? 
Why didn't some one dispute the truth of 
the conversion of the three thousand at the 
day of Pentecost? Many would have been 
glad to do so, for the new faith was spread- 
ing very rapidly and they wanted to stop it. 
The reason why they didn't dispute the 



62 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

facts, therefore, was that they knew, and 
every one knew, that these things were so. 
They couldn't dispute them or they cer- 
tainly would. 

So you see if there is certain proof that 
the New Testament was written eighteen 
hundred years ago, as it claims, then the 
proof is equally certain that the record must 
be absolutely true, although this is only one 
of many proofs. 

So you see, also, why I want to show you, 
as I can so easily, that the New Testament 
was surely written eighteen hundred years, 
or more, ago. 

If you were to go up to one of our news- 
paper offices you would find what they call 
a "file" of that paper — bound volumes of 
the paper reaching back for thirty or forty 
years. Now, suppose I want to find out 
how long a certain prominent citizen, say the 
Mayor of this city, has been a resident here, 
I look through last year's volume, and I find 






" WHY DO YOU BELIE VE IT ?" 63 

his name occurring here and there all along 
through. Well, I know he was here before 
that, for the paper wouldn't refer to him as 
a citizen before he became a citizen here. 
So I go back into the volume for the year 
previous, and I find his name scattered along 
through that. Here it is said he bought a 
piece of property, and there is an item about 
his moving into a certain house, and so on. 
"Oh," I say, "he was here before that." So 
I follow along back through the record for 
twenty or twenty-five years, until at last I 
find what year he came into town. Back of 
that he will probably not be mentioned at 
all; certainly not as a citizen. So I can 
trace through the record to the very year 
when he came. 

In the same way I can trace back through 
the records and literature of nations to the 
time of Christ, and to the time when the 
New Testament was written. Nearly every 
book of consequence which has been written 



64 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

since the time of Christ, whether it is on law, 
or philosophy, or history, or art, has some- 
thing to say about Christ or Christianity, 
and some quotation from the New Testa- 
ment. I go back one hundred years, and I 
find books of poetry, and history, and art, 
with quotations from the New Testament. 
Well, I know that the New Testament must 
have been written before that. I go back a 
thousand years and I find dusty old books 
which were written a thousand years ago by 
poets and historians, and I find in them and 
all the books between, constant references 
to Christ who was crucified at Jerusalem, 
and constant quotations from the New Test- 
ament, sometimes from one part and some- 
times from another. So I know that the 
New Testament must have been written 
more than a thousand years ago, because no 
one could quote from a book until after it 
was written. The newspapers won't speak of 
the Mayor as a citizen until after he comes to 



"WHY DO YOU BELIEVE IT?" 65 

town. So I go on back, century after cen- 
tury, and I can find quotations and refer- 
ences to the New Testament in books 
which no one questions, as far back as the 
very year in which some of those books 
were written, during the first century, less 
than a generation after Christ was crucified. 
Well, I know that the New Testament must 
have been written, in part, at least, as early 
as that, because these persons could not 
quote it until after it was written. Beyond 
that there are no quotations, because there 
was no New Testament to quote from. It 
is like our search through the Mayor's rec- 
ord. Beyond a certain point there were no 
references, because he hadn't moved into 
town. Well, when we get back as far as the 
record entirely outside of the Bible takes us, 
where are we? Why, we are almost or quite 
back to the very date where the New Testa- 
ment claims to have been written. I could 
give you the names of authors all the way 
along through the centuries, who quote from 
the New Testament. 



66 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

In one of our campaigns, during the war, 
we struck out through a dense forest, with 
only the slightest trail and no road to guide 
us. A few engineers went ahead with a 
compass and put a certain mark on the trees. 
A few days after our whole command started 
in and we went confidently through that 
forest. As far back into the forest as we 
found that mark there we knew our engineers 
had been. So, my friends, as far back into 
the centuries as we can find the mark of the 
New Testament there we know the New 
Testament has been. How far back does 
that mark go? It goes back a little more 
than eighteen hundred years, to the very 
time when the New Testament claims it was 
written. So, if any one ever starts up and 
tells you that the New Testament was forged 
by some one only a few centuries ago, tell 
him you know better, and tell him how you 
know. Tell him you know it has blazed its 
way in nearly all the books of consequence 
that have been written for the past eighteen 
hundred years. 









V. 

FLL TELL YOU WHY. 



ET me help you recall the facts estab- 
lished in the previous talks, 
i . The Old Testament was complete when 
Christ came. He endorsed it entire, prov- 
ing his Messiahship from it, and commending 
it as a guide to eternal life. 

2. Christ worked miracles. Miracles could 
not be wrought except by the help of God. 
God would not help an untruthful person. 
Christ said He was the Messiah — the Son of 
God. 

3. We know what Christ's testimony was 
and what His work was by the New Testa- 
ment. 

4. We know the New Testament is true, 
just as we know any history. It can be 
traced back to the very time when it claims 



68 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

to have been written, just as you would trace 
a man's record through an old file of papers. 
And I showed you how, since it was written 
when it claims, many would have denied the 
things claimed for Christ if they were not 
true. But there was no denial. No such 
document has come down to us. And we 
know the truths of the Bible by the experi- 
ence which every believer has. Its truths 
do for him just what they claim. He be- 
comes a better man by believing in God's 
holy Word, and it makes better nations of 
those people who receive it. 

But you may be interested to know a little 
tie more particularly how we can trace back- 
ward through history, step by step, till we 
come to the very age when the New Testa- 
ment was written. I am more than glad to 
answer. There are several independent 
ways by which you would reach the same 
place, — all of them lying along through the 
different lines of history and literature. 



PLL TELL YOU WHY, 6t 

For instance, take the history of the Greek 
Church. You should know that the primi- 
tive Church early divided into two branches, 
east and west, Greek and Roman. Both of 
these great Churches became corrupt, al- 
though many good things remain. But the 
thing to which I call your attention is this: 
each of them has a literature and a history 
reaching back century upon century, just as 
distinctly and easily traced as the years of 
your life, to the time of the apostles. Many 
of those claimed as fathers of the Greek 
Church and of the Roman Church, were only 
a little removed from the apostles them- 
selves — lived and talked with those who 
lived and talked with the apostles ; and the 
apostles lived and talked with Christ, and 
wrote most of the New Testament. 

What is the Greek Church? Is it some 
little society whose history might easily be 
obscure? O! no; it is the national church 
of the whole Russian empire to-day. It has 



70 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

the same New Testament that you and I 
have, and it can trace its own history back 
to the days when the New Testament was 
written. So with the Roman Catholic 
Church. There are many things in the 
Romish Church which we think are wrong, 
and, therefore, we are Protestants. We pro- 
test against the abuses which have grown 
up, against the power which has been as- 
sumed by men to forgive sins — power which 
belongs only to God. But, notwithstanding 
all the abuses, the Roman Church has the 
same New Testament that we have, and she 
can trace backward along the links of her 
own history to the days when the apostles 
were on earth. 

Now, you know how we can trace back- 
ward till we come to the beginning of the 
history of this government. We can go back 
from President Cleveland to President 
Arthur; from Arthur to Garfield; from Gar- 
field to Hayes; from Hayes to Grant, and 



PLL TELL YOU WHY. 71 

so on. And we feel just as safe when read- 
ing the things done by Washington, who 
died before we were born, as we do in read- 
ing about those which happened only a few 
years ago, because these things have been 
recorded in history. We know that each 
generation has examined the record which 
its own historians made, and from which we 
gather our facts. 

So we can go back from the history of our 
own government to that of England — back 
to George III., and Cromwell, and Charles 
I., and James I., and so on back, from one 
ruler to another, till we come to the time 
when England was inhabited by barbarians. 
We know a great many things about these 
old barbarians of two thousand years ago, 
and of the Angles and Saxons, who, but 
little less barbarous, drove them northward 
into the Scottish hills. Well, in just the 
same way these two old churches, the Roman 
and the Greek, having the same New Testa- 



72 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

ment that we have, can trace backward, from 
one bishop to the one who preceded him, 
and so on almost to the very times when the 
New Testament was written. According to 
their authorities, the history of each goes 
quite back to the apostles themselves. These 
bishops and preachers could not have had 
the New Testament before it was written, so 
we know it was written at the time it claims, 
because they all preached from it and wrote 
about it, and their books, to the number of 
many thousands, are scattered all the way 
through the centuries, back to the very time 
of the apostles. 

Without giving any particular illustrations, 
I told you in the last chapter how we could 
trace the writings of the New Testament back 
to the very time when it claims to have been 
written. I illustrated in a general way by 
the search through the files of a newspaper 
for a man's record. But you can go back 
through all literature, for more than eighteen 



PLL TELL YOU WHY. 75 

hundred years, and find references to things 
which are recorded in the New Testament. 
So we know that these things were done at 
least eighteen hundred years ago. 

If, in looking up the history of George 
Washington, you could find references to 
him back through our history for sixty years 
only, you would say there had been some 
mistake. You would say: "George Wash- 
ington could not have won the war for inde- 
pendence over a hundred years ago, or we 
should find accounts of that great fact more 
than sixty years old. Such is the case. We 
can find accounts of the fact written the very 
year that the British surrendered. All the 
way along since, people have been writing 
histories, stories and songs about the great 
fact. So, concerning the great facts of the 
New Testament, — the birth of Christ, His 
crucifixion, His resurrection, and His mira- 
cles. Ever since the time when these things 
were done by Christ in Judaea and Galilee, 



74 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

people have been writing about them, and 
singing hymns about them, and we have 
copies of these hymns and histories. We 
know when they were written. We know 
that people could not be writing and singing 
about facts of the New Testament until after 
the New Testament was written. So we can 
go up, step by step, through these facts in 
history and literature, like ascending a lad- 
der, until we reach the very date when the 
New Testament was written. 

For instance, Milton's great poem, Para- 
dise Regained, was based on the New Tes- 
tament. We know when Milton wrote that. 
It was in 1671. So we would know that 
the New Testament must have been older 
than the year 1671. Martin Luther's great 
Reformation was arousing all Europe more 
than a hundred years before that. But the 
Reformation was based on the New Testa- 
ment doctrine of Faith, and books were as 
thick as Autumn leaves, in that age, which 



VLL TELL VOL' 11 //) . 75 

told about the facts of the New Testament. 
So it must have been older than that. Back 
through the dark ages you go, finding hun- 
dreds of books written during a thousand 
years about the New Testament. Hence 
the New Testament must have been older 
than the Dark Ages. You go back to the 
times of Tacitus, a Roman historian, who 
wrote about 90 A. D., less than sixty years 
after Christ was crucified. You find him 
telling how rapidly Christianity had spread. 
You must remember that he himself was a 
Roman pagan and a friend of the Roman 
emperor. He tells us that Christianity had 
spread so rapidly that Christians had become 
numerous even in Rome. He tells how the 
emperor persecuted them, tying some of 
them up in sacks, naked, with poisonous 
reptiles; how he covered others with pitch 
and tar, and burned them as torches. Now 
you will see how that agrees with the New 
Testament, which tells us that the gospel 



7G TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

was carried through Asia Minor, even to 
Rome. 

All of which shows, on the testimony of a 
pagan, that the truths of the New Testament 
were preached widely through the Roman 
empire less than sixty years after Christ was 
crucified. To have accomplished such re- 
sults as Tacitus recognizes, must have taken 
time. In his time converts were numerous 
throughout the empire. When Christ was 
crucified there was one little band at Jeru- 
salem. Such results could not be brought 
about in much less than sixty years. 



VI. 
"THE JEWS, YOUR MAJESTY:' 



RAILROAD accident once compelled 
me to ride a number of miles in a 
conveyance with several other passengers 
who, like myself, had shared in the disaster. 
I found myself in company with a young 
Jew who sat on the same seat with me. He 
was intelligent on general matters, inclined 
to be agreeable and chatty, so we soon fell 
into a pleasant conversation. Yankees are 
said to be inquisitive; so are some Jews. 
At all events that young man soon found out 
that I was a preacher, and our talk took a 
religious turn forthwith. He was inclined to 
be rather positive in his statements, and was 
very strong in his opinion that there wasn't 
much in my religion. As a clincher to what 
he had said he wanted to know how many 



78 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

Jews we had ever succeeded in winning to 
the Christian Faith. Well, I was compelled 
to admit that the number of Jewish Chris- 
tians is very small. It is true that Jews, as 
a rule, are very tenacious of their views. 

I did not answer him sarcastically as I 
might have done. I did not remind him 
how his fathers had said of Christ, " His 
blood be on us and on our children," and 
how their holy city was very soon afterwards 
utterly destroyed; how thousands and hun- 
dreds of thousands were slain with the sword 
or died a violent death in the very city where 
they had cried out, li His blood be on us and 
on our children," only a few years before. 
I did not remind him that his nation, though 
wonderfully preserved in all of its race char- 
acteristics, has been a nation of wanderers 
on the face of the earth ever since. I might 
have told him all these things. But he was 
in no condition to be benefitted by such a 
bitter reminder, and I tried to follow that 



"THE JEWS, YOUR MAJESTY." 79 

suggestion which says, "A soft answer turn- 
eth away wrath." 

I rarely see any Jew but I remember that 
here is a descendant of that race which was 
once the chosen people of God. The blood 
of Abraham is in his veins. He may be 
descended from David's royal line. Kings 
and priests have gone before him, and God's 
promises, rich and free, are yet to be ful- 
filled unto his race. 

The fact is, too, that every Jew whom you 
meet is a living fulfillment of some things 
which are written in God's holy Word. If 
you know what the Bible says about that 
ancient and honorable people it adds to your 
interest every time you meet one of them. 
And I want to direct your attention to some 
of these things which are written in the Bible 
this evening. 

Now let us remember what we have been 
considering on previous evenings. 

If you have followed what I have said in 
the last two talks you have seen how strong 



80 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

and unanswerable is the proof, that the Bible 
was written entire, as we have it, nearly or 
quite eighteen hundred years ago; and that 
the Old Testament was completed nearly 
four hundred years before that. Thus we 
know that every word which we find written 
in the Old Testament was certainly written 
there as long as twenty-two hundred or more 
years ago. 

If we find any exact description there of 
people and events which are happening 
every day, what do we know? We know 
that when those words were written they 
w r ere certainly prophecy. Who of us can 
tell exactly what will happen to-morrow? 
Not one. We know many things which will 
probably happen to-morrow. We are not 
certain of any. Much less can we tell what 
will happen a year from now; still less 
what will happen a generation from now. 
And who would be rash enough to risk a 
guess about what will be transpiring to cer- 



"THE JEWS, YOUR MAJESTY." 81 

tain people three thousand years from now? 
Suppose we should try to write out what 
would be the history of the descendants of 
certain families sixty years from now? You 
know very well it would only be guess-work, 
and not one guess in a hundred would come 
out right. The people whom we would 
think of as being rich sixty years from now 
would possibly be found in the poor-house. 
The children of him whom we esteem only as 
a plodder and an ignoramus, may be in pro- 
fessors' chairs. The children of the heiresses 
of to-day may wash for a living sixty years 
from now. We can't tell. Our prophecies 
would be guess-work and our guesses would 
be like the weather guesses of poor Mr. 
Vennor, hot when they should be cold, and 
wet when they should be dry. But the 
strange fact about things foretold in the 
Bible, some of them eighteen hundred and 
some of them three thousand years ago, is 
that they all come true ! If one of our 



82 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

guesses thirty years ahead should turn out 
true — even if one out of a hundred or a 
thousand — we should think it worth mention- 
ing if we should remember it. We would 
call the attention of friends and neighbors to 
the fact. But here are things told in the 
Bible about times which were then future. 
Some of them were to come to pass in a few 
years; some in a century, and some not till 
a thousand or two thousand years should go 
by. Now surely it would be remarkable, if 
you and I, looking into any book and find- 
ing in it many prophecies of things thus to 
be done in the distant future, should find 
that half of those things had actually come 
true in history. Wouldn't it be really won- 
derful? I tell you, young people, no human 
being ever guessed as straight as that would 
be. But I have to tell you that every one 
of these things which the Bible said should 
be done by this time has actually come to 
pass, and some things which the Bible said 



-THE JEWS, YOUR MAJESTY:' 83 

three thousand years ago should surely come, 
are being fulfilled before our eyes this very 
day. 

If anyone wants to argue with you, it 
would be better as a rule to avoid it. But 
if he insists, just say, " Let us pray first/' 
and get down on your knees with him and 
ask God to guide what you shall both say. 
Windy talk doesn't amount to much on 
either side. If he still wants to argue after 
you have prayed with him, then quietly ask 
him if he knows how numerous the pro- 
phecies of the Bible are. He will probably 
be a little confused. Tell him there are 
scores of them. Ask him if he knows how 
long ago some of them were spoken and 
written. He will be confused again. Tell 
him that some of them were uttered three or 
four thousand years ago, and that none of 
them were uttered less than eighteen hun- 
dred years ago. Then ask him if he ever 
heard of any person guessing correctly what 



84 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

would happen three thousand years in the 
future. Ask him if he can point out one of 
these many Bible prophecies which has ever 
failed to come true, just as it said. He will 
be confused again. Then tell him that if he 
can find one that has failed in any part you 
will throw your Bible in the fire and be a 
disbeliever like himself. 

I tell you, young people, you are perfectly 
safe in saying that every word which should 
be fulfilled at this time, is fulfilled. The 
trains are never late on God's railroad. They 
are always on time. The clock and calendar 
of God are always exact. If it could be 
proved that His Word had failed once, that 
would prove it was not His Word and I would 
not trust it, for God never fails. 

Not one of his divine foretellings has ever 
failed. There are no blockades or collisions 
which can hinder the car of God. Look in 
your Bibles. Read the prophecies. Find if 
one has failed. If they havn't failed, if they 



11 THE JEWS, YOUR MAJESTY:' 85 

have all come true, then they are surely the 
words of God, for no man can guess every 
time, nor once in a thousand times, what 
will happen hundreds and thousands of 
years in the future. 

Now let us return to our young friend the 
Jew. Tis a strange coincidence that we 
should make his acquaintance through a dis- 
aster, for his nation has been tossed and 
buffeted with disaster upon disaster for over 
eighteen hundred years. In America the 
Jews are free and honored citizens, like 
others. But in other lands it has not been 
so, and in some it is not so to-day. See how 
the Jews have been persecuted, robbed, 
butchered and driven about in Russia during 
the past four years. Well, that's only a 
sample of what has been going on, at differ- 
ent times, in every nation of Europe. In 
England the Jews have numbered ten or 
twelve different and cruel persecutions. In 
the third and fifth centuries thousands were 



86 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

murdered in different parts of Europe. In 
the sixth century over twenty thousand of 
them were slain, and as many more sold for 
slaves. In Spain they have endured eight 
or ten fearful persecutions and other lesser 
ones between. So in France and Germany, 
scattered all through the centuries, there have 
been edicts banishing them, confiscating 
their property, permitting them to be rob- 
bed, beaten, and outraged. There is no 
European nation which has not joined in 
these atrocities, at one time or another, 
since the destruction of Jerusalem. 

Now look into the face of our young 
friend here as we ride. You see at once 
that he is a Jew. You do not need to ask 
him; you know it. He is proud of it. It 
is his boast that he is a " son of Abraham." 
Now how is it that you can tell so easily? It 
is not because he is a foreigner just over. 
No; he was born in America and his father 
was born here before him. Yet he is as dis- 



"THE JEWS, YOUR MAJESTY:' 87 

tinctly a Jew as if he had been born in 
Jerusalem at the time of Christ. 

When you think of it that is very strange: 
for no other people can be told at sight in 
that way after they have been a few gener- 
ations in this country. You can't tell of the 
first man you meet, whose fathers were born 
in America, whether his ancestors were 
French or German or Italian. 

In fact you can't tell at sight, even a few 
years after they have come to this country, 
if they adopt our style of dress and living, 
whether they are Frenchmen or Germans or 
Englishmen. Especially you can't tell after 
two or three generations. In order to keep 
their race characteristics all other people are 
obliged to have a government, a nation, and 
a country; and they are obliged to stay in 
their own country, wearing their own pecu- 
liar dress, speaking their own peculiar lan- 
guage, obeying their own peculiar laws. 
Let them go anywhere else and they soon 



88 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

become mingled and inseparable from the 
people among whom they are. 

But in our young friend, whom we met at 
the railroad disaster, we have the represen- 
tative of a race which for two thousand 
years has been scattered through all the 
earth; they have mingled with all peoples 
and mixed with none; they have learned to 
obey the laws of every nation but still con- 
tinue to be a nation by themselves. They 
have learned every language of the earth, 
but whether you find them speaking the 
polite French, or the broad and solid Ger- 
man, or the barbarous dialects of Africa, or 
the strange jargon of China, they are still 
Jews. You can tell them at sight. They 
are wearing the dress of every nation to-day; 
but whether made up after French fashion 
plates, or clad in the flowing robes of the 
Orient, you could tell a Jew wherever you 
should meet him. 

Other people taken away from their native 
land, even under conditions of prosperity, 



"THE JEWS, YOUR MAJESTY* 89 

cannot keep themselves separate more than 
a generation or two; but these people, driven 
and tossed, burned and beaten and plun- 
dered, having no government of their own 
for nearly two thousand years, have kept 
themselves so distinct that a child can tell a 
Jew wherever and whenever he sees one. 
And this is neither a reproach to the Jew nor 
a credit to the child of ten or twelve years. 
The peculiarities are so marked that the child 
must be very dull not to see them. 

Now I am sure you will all agree with me 
in saying that the preservation of the Jewish 
race is one of the strangest things that ever 
happened. I think nothing in the affairs of 
this world has been more wonderful. But I 
am sure you will also agree with me in say- 
ing that it is still more wonderful if we can 
find that it was foretold thousands of years 
ago that this very thing should happen to 
the Jews. But that is just the fact. And I 
want you now to open your Bibles and mark 



90 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

some places which I will point out to you, 
and if you are ever tempted to doubt, just 
open to one or two of these prophecies, and 
then look into the face of the next Jew 
whom you meet, and see how wonderfully 
these words are fulfilled. And when you 
read how they have been banished from one 
nation to another, how they have been whip- 
ped, burned, robbed, and butchered; when 
you read that these things are going on to- 
day in the great empire of Russia, when you 
remember that there were hundreds of years 
when the Jews scarcely had any civil rights 
in any nation of Europe, then think of these 
passages of prophecy and see how they have 
been fulfilled. When you see that, notwith- 
standing all these persecutions, they have 
increased and spread, and kept themselves 
separate in every nation on earth, then think 
what God said, through his prophets, should 
happen. 

Now let us read Deuteronomy xxviii., 64- 
66, written about 1450 B. C: " And the 



"THE JEWS, YOUR MAJESTY:' 91 

Lord shall scatter them among all people 
from the one end of the earth even unto the 
other; and there thou shall serve other gods 
which neither thou nor thy fathers have 
known, even of wood and stone. 

" And among these nations shalt thou find 
no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot 
have rest; but the Lord shall give thee there 
a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and 
sorrow of mind. 

" And thy life shall hang in doubt before 
thee and thou shalt have fear day and night, 
and shalt have no assurance of thy life." 

Hasn't that been literally fulfilled? Is it 
not now being fulfilled ? Yet notwith- 
standing all this the Jews would not be cut 
off. Turn to Leviticus xxvi., 44. This 
book was written about fifteen hundred 
years before Christ. " And yet for all that, 
when they be in the land of their enemies, I 
will not cast them away, neither will I abhor 
them, to destroy them utterly, and to break 



92 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

my covenant with them, for I am the Lord 
their God." Though scattered from one end 
of the world to the other they shall still be 
preserved, as we see to-day. 

Also read Jeremiah xlvi., 27 and 28, writ- 
ten about the year 600 B. C: " But fear not 
thou, O my servant Jacob, and be not dis- 
mayed, O Israel: for behold, I will save thee 
from afar off, and thy seed from the land of 
their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and 
be in rest and at ease, and none shall make 
him afraid. 

" Fear thou not, O Jacob my servant, 
saith the Lord, for I am with thee; for I will 
make a full end of all the nations whither I 
have driven thee; but I will not make a full 
end of thee, but correct thee in a measure; 
yet will I not leave thee wholly unpunished." 

Now turn to that most wonderful of all 
these prophecies, written more than twenty- 
five hundred years ago, Hosea iii., 4 and 5: 
" For the children of Israel shall abide many 



"THE JEWS, YOUR MAJESTY:' 93 

days without a king, and without a prince, 
and without a sacrifice, and without an 
image, and without an ephod, and without 
teraphim: Afterwards shall the children of 
Israel return and seek the Lord their God, 
and David their king, and shall fear the Lord 
and his goodness in the latter days." 

The Jews have been over eighteen hundred 
years without a king and without a prince. 
The temple, which was the religious center 
for sacrifice and pilgrimage, has during all 
that time lain waste. But the Jews remain 
as the Lord said by the mouth of His 
prophet. 

You can understand, in view of these 
facts, an answer which a great scholar once 
made to a great ruler. Frederick the Great 
once asked a learned man, " How can you 
give me in one sentence an unanswerable 
proof of the Bible? " The learned man sim- 
ply answered, " The Jews, your majesty." 



VII. 

WHAT JESUS SAID AND WHAT TITUS 
DID. 



VrPHERE is a wonderful city in the East, 
£yy| which is now under the sway of the 
Turks. At one time or another it has been 
conquered by nearly or quite every great 
empire near to it. At one time it was taken 
by the Assyrians, at another by the Egypt- 
ians, at another by the Greeks under Alex- 
ander the Great, and again, by the Romans 
under Titus. The history of that city alone 
would fill more volumes than the histories of 
some nations; and the many strange stories 
which could be told about it are as fascin- 
ating as a romance; while some of them are 
the most terrible and real tragedies that 
have ever been written. You will know be- 
fore this that I mean Jerusalem, the once 



WHAT JESUS SAID. 95 

beautiful center of the Jewish nation and of 
the Jewish religion. 

I told you the other evening how the Jews 
are a living fulfillment of the things which 
God's Word foretold thousands of years ago, 
The history of their beloved and once lovely 
city, shows us many facts which are just as 
striking and quite as convincing in their 
proof of God's Word. I do not think that 
any honest person can read the twenty-fourth 
chapter of Matthew, or the twenty-first chap- 
ter of Luke, and then read the fifth and 
sixth books of Josephus' "Wars of the Jews," 
without being convinced that the words of 
Jesus Christ are divine. 

As I shall ask you to open to those chap- 
ters presently, and look at Christ's wonderful 
prophecy of the overthrow of Jerusalem, 
you may naturally ask: "How do we know 
but these gospels were written after Jeru- 
salem was destroyed, instead of before, as 
they claim?" 



96 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS, 

I have shown you, in a previous talk, how 
we know that the gospels were written in the 
first century. I now say that we can know, 
just as we do in reference to other historic 
books, the years within which they must 
have been written. Let me illustrate. Sup- 
pose someone, living before our great war, 
had written a book about the condition of 
things between the North and the South, 
and had pointed out that events were tend- 
ing toward secession. Several such books 
were actually written. But there could not 
be any reference to things done in the war, 
because the war had not yet come. If no 
date were given and the author's name were 
lost, we should still know that his book was 
written before the war. Why? Because if 
the war was past he would certainly speak 
of it. Or, if he should try to deceive; if he 
should be writing since the war, and try to 
make people believe he had written before 
the war, the thing would be impossible. It 



WHAT JESUS SAID. 97 

is just as impossible to do that as to take 
one man's picture when another man's face 
is before the camera. Some little sentence, 
or reference, or allusion would creep in which 
would show that the writer knew what had 
happened at Shiloh, or Chickamauga, or 
Gettysburg. No such deception of any ex- 
tent has ever succeeded. 

In the same way we know that the gospels 
of Matthew and Luke were written before the 
destruction of Jerusalem. There is not, in 
either of them, the slightest reference to that 
great event which stirred the whole Jewish 
nation and the Roman world with great ex- 
citement. It is utterly impossible that a 
Jew, as Matthew was, or a Roman citizen, as 
Luke was, could write after that event with- 
out once referring to it as a thing of the 
past. It is supposed by some that Matthew 
wrote about seven or eight years after the 
crucifixion. About that we are not sure. 
But one thing we are sure of, he certainly 



98 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

wrote before Jerusalem was destroyed. 
What does that prove? Why, it proves, of 
course, that any word of Christ which he 
records about the destruction of that city, 
must have been prophecy. 

I shall presently quote from the words of 
Josephus. Very few of you, if any, will 
need to be told who Josephus was. He was 
a Jew who accompanied the Roman general, 
Titus. Being a Jew, who never was con- 
verted by the Gospel, we may be sure he 
would not willingly write or say anything 
to prove the words of Christ. He wrote the 
history of the destruction of Jerusalem, and 
as you shall see, if he had set himself to the 
work of proving the prophecies of Christ, 
could scarcely have added anything to what 
he actually wrote, without any such design. 

Now, please open your Bibles to the 
twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew. You shall 
read the Scripture verses and I will read from 
this volume of Josephus, which I hold in 



WHAT JESUS SAID. 99 

my hand. You shall read the words in 
which Christ foretold the destruction of the 
temple and the city, as he looked at them 
from the Mount of Olives, and I will read 
the words of a Jew, who tells us how the 
city appeared to him, less than forty years 
after, as he looked upon it from the Roman 
trenches, when Christ's words were being 
fulfilled. 

You may read from the first and second 
verses of the chapter: 

"And Jesus went out and departed from 
the temple; and His disciples came to Him 
for to show Him the buildings of the temple. 
And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all 
these things? Verily, I say unto you, There 
shall not be left here one stone upon another, 
that shall not be thrown down. " 

Josephus says (Wars, Bk. vi., chap. 9) : 
"Now, the Romans set fire to the extreme 
parts of the city and burnt them down, and 
entirely demolished its walls. # # # 



m 



{\s i ■ . ; \ k , 



^Wai s bk \ i^ " It w .is so thor- 

even with the ground by those 

w ho to the foundation, that thei c 

was n^ to make those that came 

had ever been inhabits 

III: Jesus said, " Take 
'.o man deceive you For many 
come in my name, saying, 1 am Christ; 
and shall deceive main '"And many 

phets shall rise and shall deceive many." 

Josephus says ' The land was overrun 

with magicians, seducers and imposters, who 

the peep 1 them in multitudes, 

into solitudes and deserts, to see si^ns and 

they promised to show by 

powei ot" uod " Of these, one is men- 

• td b) the name of D< s, the Sam 

to be the Christ; and 

Simon Mannas, who said he was the Son ot 

God 

In another place (Antiq.. Bk, XX, ch. 8): 
"These deceivers Mid imposters persuaded 



WHA T JESUS SAID. 101 

the multitude to follow them into the wilder- 
ness and pretended that they would exhibit 
manifest wonders and signs, that should be 
performed by the providence of God. And 
many that were prevailed upon by them 
suffered the punishment of their folly. " 

Bear in mind that Josephus was writing of 
what actually happened just before the siege 
of Jerusalem, then read what Christ said 
should happen in Matthew xxiv. ,24: " For 
there shall arise false Christ's and false proph- 
ets, and shall show great signs and wonders, 
insomuch that if it were possible they shall 
deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told 
you before. Wherefore, if they shall say 
unto you, Behold, He is in the desert; go 
not forth. Behold, he is in the secret cham- 
bers; believe it not." 

Read now Matt, xxiv., 6: "And ye shall 
hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that 
ye be not troubled." 

At the time when Christ spoke these words 
there could be nothing more improbable 



102 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

than wars in the near future. The Jews 
were at peace with themselves and all the 
world. But, in less than forty years, there 
were wars in different parts of Palestine; 
cities were laid waste and fields were left 
uncultivated. This is what the Jewish his- 
torian has to say about those times (Wars, 
Bk. ii., chap. 18): "The disorders, in all 
Syria, were terrible, and every city was 
divided into two armies, encamped one 
against the other, and the preservation of 
one party was in the destruction of the other; 
so that daytime was spent in shedding of 
blood and night in fear; which was of the 
two more terrible. ,, 

Matt. xxiv. , 7 : " There shall be famines 
and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers 
places. " 

Josephus (Antiq., Bk. iii., chap. 18) : 
" Nay, further, a little before the beginning 
of this war, when Claudius was Emperor of 
the Romans, and Ismael was our high priest, 



WHAT JESUS SAID. 103 

and when so great a famine had come upon 
us that one-tenth deal of wheat was sold for 
four drachmae, etc." Other famines are men- 
tioned by other writers. There were " earth- 
quakes " and " pestilences. " Tacitus and 
Suetonius speak of many as occuring about 
this time. 

And this is what Josephus has to say 
(Wars, B. iv., ch. 4): " For there broke out 
a prodigious storm in the night, with the ut- 
most violence and very strong winds with 
the largest showers of rain, with continual 
lightnings, terrible thunderings and amazing 
concussions and bellowings of the earth, that 
was in an earthquake. These things were a 
manifest indication that some destruction 
was coming upon men, when the whole sys- 
tem of the world was put into this disorder; 
and anyone would guess that these wonders 
foreshadowed some great calamities that 
were coming." 

Turn now to Luke xix., 43, which refers 
to the same great series of events. Jesus 



104 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

said: " For the days shall come upon thee 
that thine enemies shall cast a trench about 
thee and compass thee round and keep thee 
in on every side." 

Josephus says (Wars, B. v., ch. 13): 
"When Titus had, therefore, encompassed 
the city with this wall, and put garrisons 
into proper places, he went rounfl the wall 
at the first watch of the night and observed 
how the guard was kept." And that " en- 
compassing '' of Jerusalem continued till the 
doomed city fell into the hands of the Roman 
soldiers. See how remarkably the words of 
fulfillment accord with the very words of 
Christ's prophecy. 

Now we will look at Luke xxi., 1 1 , where 
Christ tells his disciples there should be 
fearful sights and great signs * # from 
heaven." 

I can read only a few of the many sen- 
tences from Josephus (Wars, B. vi., ch. 6) 
which show how literally these words were 



WHAT JESUS SAID. 105 

fulfilled. Cl Thus there was a star resembling 
a sword which stood over the city, and a 
comet which continued a whole year. Thus 
also before the Jews' rebellion # # # # 
[which was the occasion of the coming of 
the Roman army under Titus] so great a 
light shone round the altar and the holy 
house that it appeared to be bright daytime. 

* * This light was interpreted by the 
sacred scribes to portend those events that 
followed immediately upon it. * # More- 
over, the eastern gate of the inner court 
which was of brass and vastly heavy, and 
had been with difficulty shut by twenty men 

* # and had bolts fastened very deep into 
the firm floor * * was seen to open of 
its own accord about the sixth hour of the 
night. Now those that kept watch of the 
temple, came hereupon running to the cap- 
tain of the temple and told him of it * * 
and not without great difficulty was the gate 
shut again. * * The men of learning 



106 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS* 

understood it, that the security of their holy 
house was dissolved. # * So these pub- 
licly declared that this signal foreshadowed 
the desolation that was coming. * * * 

Besides these, a few days after the feast 
* * a certain prodigious and incredible 
phenomenon appeared. I suppose the ac- 
count of it would seem to be a fable, were it 
not related by those who saw it, and were 
not the events that followed it of such a 
nature as to deserve such signals; for before 
sunsetting chariots and troops of soldiers in 
their armor were seen running about among 
the clouds and surrounding cities. More- 
over, at the feast of Pentecost, as the priests 
were going by night into the inner court of 
the temple, as their custom was, # * they 
said that in the first place they felt a quak- 
ing, and heard a great noise, and after that 
a voice as of a great multitude, saying, 
" Let us remove hence.'' 

Now I need only ask you to look again at 
the verse of Scripture upon which these 



■ WHA T JESUS SAID. 107 

words are such a comment. What did 
Christ say should be? u Fearful sights and 
great signs from heaven. ,, And you will 
remember it is an unconverted Jew who tells 
us what " sights and great signs " there were. 

So I might lead you through these won- 
derful chapters, verse by verse, and then 
show you from the pages of profane history 
how every word which spoke of the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem was literally fulfilled. But 
I will detain you with only one more refer- 
ence. 

Read now Matt, xxiv., 21: " Then shall 
be great tribulation such as was not since 
the beginning of the world to this time; no, 
nor ever shall be/' 

All historians agree that the sufferings and 
slaughter at the siege and destruction of 
Jerusalem were beyond the power of speech 
to tell. Now listen to the language of 
Josephus the Jew (Preface to Wars): "It 
appears to me that the misfortunes of all 



108 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

men from the beginning of the world, if they 
be compared to these of the Jews, are not so 
considerable as they were." 

Then he tells what some of those horrors 
were. Whole chapters are given to the fear- 
ful picture. Mothers ate their own babes, 
so great was their hunger. But let us have 
the very words of the historian (Wars, B. vi., 
ch. 9): "But when they (the Romans) went 
in numbers into the lanes of the city, with 
their swords drawn, they slew those whom 
they overtook, without mercy, and set fire to 
the houses whither the Jews had fled, and 
burnt every soul in them and laid waste a 
great many of the rest; and when they were 
come near the houses to plunder them they 
found in them entire families of dead and the 
upper rooms full of corpses, that is of such 
as died by the famine." * * * # 

Yet the Romans had no pity for those who 
were still alive, " but ran every one through 
whom they met with, and obstructed the very 



WHAT JESUS SAID. 109 

lanes with their dead bodies, and made the 
whole city run down with blood." # * * 

"Now the number of those that were car- 
ried captive during this whole war was 
97,000; the number of those that perished 
during the whole siege was one million one 
hundred thousand, the greater part of whom 
were indeed of the same nation, but not 
belonging to the city itself; for they were 
come up from all the country to the feast of 
unleavened bread, and were on a sudden 
shut up by an army" (that of Titus). 

I close with a word or two. Young peo- 
ple, if you are ever tempted to doubt, turn 
to those wonderful words of Christ, and 
remember how exactly and terribly they 
were fulfilled less than forty years after they 
were spoken. All which the historian re- 
corded was present to the eye of Christ 
when he " beheld the city and wept over it, 
saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at 
least in this thy day the things which belong 
unto thy peace! but now they are hid from 
thine eyes." 



VIII. 

ONE BREAD BASKET FOR THOU- 
SANDS OF PEOPLE. 



^N the eastern shore of a certain beauti- 
ful lake, in a renowned eastern country, 
a very strange event once took place. In fact 
a great many strange events of various kinds 
have taken place around and on that lake, 
which it would require a volume to tell. 
Some of those events have been among the 
greatest in the history of the world. But that 
of which I am about to tell you was very 
peculiar indeed. A young Teacher was there 
whose reputation had spread through all the 
country. His words were very wonderful 
and very beautiful. His deeds were as 
strange and as beautiful as his words. Over 
on the other side of the lake there was a 
little city where, in the presence of a large 



BREAD FOR THOUSANDS. \\\ 

wedding party, he turned several water-pots 
full of water into wine. It was noised about 
that every one who came to him for healing 
was surely healed, no matter how sick he 
might be. And, stranger still, it was said 
that he did all of this doctoring without any 
sort of medicine. He could drive away a 
long standing disease by a touch of his 
gentle hand; cure those who had been deaf 
by a word, and restore those who were blind 
without any surgeon's knife or medicine 
whatever. It was even said, by those who 
had seen it done, that he could restore the 
dead to life again. As was natural under 
such circumstances, a great crowd of people 
gathered wherever it was known he would 
be. Of course, many who came were moved 
only by curiosity. They wanted to see one 
who could do such wonders, just as a great 
many would go from the same motive to-day 
if there were some one near here who could 
do such things. Many who went to see and 



112 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

hear him were his enemies from the first; for 
they were also teachers of the people; and 
what he taught so clearly and beautifully 
contradicted what they taught. Others 
were his enemies because what he said 
pointed out that their lives were sinful, and 
that they must change their conduct and re- 
pent of their sins. Of course, these enemies 
of his would be on the lookout to find any- 
thing which could possibly be used to prove 
that he was only a pretender. You may be 
very sure that they looked very carefully into 
every case. They sent committees to watch 
Him and annoy Him when He was talking. 
I suppose if all the facts were known we 
should see that they sent committees to ex- 
amine every great cure that he performed, 
until they found it was no sort of use. There 
are one or two places where we can see how 
these committees tried to find a flaw in his 
work, and how they tried to torment one 
who was cured of blindness, when they 



BREAD FOR THOUSANDS. 113 

found it was no use to deny the great fact 
(John, chap. ix). Now, it is a very inter- 
esting fact that they never found a single 
case which they could dispute. They didn't 
deny that the water had been turned into 
wine; they didn't deny that the blind had 
been restored; they didn't deny that lepers 
had been cleansed by a word from his lips; 
they didn't deny even that the dead had been 
raised up. 

Well it is no wonder that the people 
came to see and to hear him. And on this 
occasion, it seems there were fully five thou- 
sand men, besides women and children, who 
had flocked together from cities and villages 
and country places, into an out of the way 
place to hear him. They had neglected to 
provide for their wants — perhaps having not 
thought of staying so long. But the words 
of the young Teacher had charmed them, 
and there they were, at supper time, without 
any supper. What should they do? Some 



114 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

of them proposed to send the people away. 
But the Teacher said, No; that will not 
do. They need not depart; "give ye them 
to eat." But how could they do it? They 
had only five loaves of bread and two fishes. 
But he said to them, You have the people 
sit on the grass; arrange them in rows so 
that you can go conveniently among them. 
Then he took those five loaves and two fishes 
and looked up to heaven, and blessed them. 
Then he called his friends and began to break 
and give them out. And he gave one all he 
could carry, and another, and another, and 
they went among the people, giving out. 
And all of that great company of more than 
five thousand, ate all that they wanted. And 
when they were all satisfied, there were 
twelve baskets full of pieces left. 

Now, how do you suppose those people 
must have felt as they saw that Teacher 
standing there and breaking off the bread — 
getting enough to make thousands of loaves 



BREAD FOR THOUSANDS. 115 

from those five loaves and as much as to 
make thousands of fishes from those two 
fishes? They knew, as you and I w r ould 
know, if we saw such a thing done, that 
the person who did it was either divine or 
had divine help. They knew that it was a 
great miracle. Not one of them could deny 
it. There is no evidence that one of them 
ever did deny it. 

Now, you will bear in mind what I said 
in a previous talk. The Gospel of Matthew, 
telling all about this miracle, was published 
and read all through that country, while a 
great many of those thousands of peo- 
ple must have been still living. Surely, 
if that miracle had not been true, some of 
them would have been interested to write to 
the priests who had put Christ to death at 
Jerusalem, and would have told them: 
"Why, I was there when it is claimed that 
miracle was done — that feeding of five thou- 
sand men, besides women and children — and 
it is all a deception. It isn't true." And, 
if anyone had written any such thing you 



116 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

may be sure the priests would have pub- 
lished it all over the world, for the religion 
of Christ was spreading everywhere, and 
they hated it. They couldn't bear to see it 
succeed. They put the apostles in prison 
and killed one of them. But they never 
denied one of the miracles of Christ. 

Why didn't some one write from Galilee 
to Jerusalem, denying that miracle? Why, 
evidently because they knew, and everybody 
knew, that there were thousands who could 
testify that it was true and that they had 
seen it with their own eyes. They had 
means of sending word to Rome and Cor- 
inth, where churches were being organized. 

A great many fragments of books and 
papers have come down to us from those 
times, but not a line denying the miracles of 
Christ Jesus. We know, therefore, that 
such books were not written, for some line 
would have been saved if they had. Now, 
why didn't they write to different places and 
deny the wonderful miracles of Christ? Why 
didn't they say, " The widow of Nain's son 



BREAD FOR THOUSANDS. 117 

was not raised from the dead? " I'll tell you 
why: Because he probably lived right there 
in Palestine as long as most of them — a liv- 
ing witness, ready to say to all who asked 
him, "Yes, I was dead and am alive again! " 

So with Lazarus. We know that he lived 
some time after he was raised by Christ, and 
many went out from Jerusalem to see him 
and to eat with him at the same table. If 
you will turn to John xii., r-il, you will find 
the record which shows how the resurrection 
of Lazarus affected both the friends and the 
foes of Christ. One went to meet him soci- 
ally, the other wanted to put him to death 
again and so get him out of the way, because 
his presence was a testimony which no denial 
of theirs could touch. 

Probably there were nearly or quite a 
hundred thousand persons living, when the 
first of the gospels was published, who had 
either witnessed some of Christ's miracles 
with their own eyes, or had seen persons 



118 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS, 

upon whom the miracles were performed. 
So you see why no denial of these miracles 
was attempted. It would be no sort of use 
for Chrises enemies to deny them under such 
circumstances, for thousands would rise up 
and say: "There is no use of denying that 
miracle, for I was there and saw it done. " 

You will hear of other miracles, performed 
by saints and wonder-workers. But they 
are impostures. You will notice they are 
always done in the dark, or away from the 
gaze of men. Christ's miracles were done 
in the open day, when hundreds and even 
thousands could see. So were the miracles 
of the apostles, to whom he gave power to 
work them. 

If Christ had ever so much as once failed 
in trying to work a miracle, that would 
arouse our suspicion. But he never failed. 
About forty distinct miracles are recorded, 
with the particulars, besides a number of 
cases where it is recorded that they came 



BREAD FOR THOUSANDS. 119 

from all the region around, bringing a great 
multitude of those who were sick, and he 
healed them all. (Mark i., 32.) The cures 
were not gradual, as when medicines are 
used, but instantaneous. 

In the presence of such abundant facts, 
who can doubt the divinity of the Lord 
Jesus Christ? You and I know very well 
that no man could do these things unless 
God helped him. But God would not help 
him to deceive the people; and Christ said, 
over and over again, that He was the Son 
of God and the Redeemer of the world. 

As I have shown you, the facts are above 
dispute. They were never disputed by those 
who were nearest to Christ. How foolish 
must one be who, therefore, denies the div- 
inity of Christ. He is compelled to believe 
that an unaided man could open blind eyes 
and raise the dead to life. It is better, dear 
friends, for us all to bow down at His feet, 
and cry out, as Thomas did when the proof 
was before him, "My Lord and my God." 



IX. 

WHAT HAS IT DONE FOR THE WORLD? 



SPHERE is one test which all practical 
§$% people apply to everything which seeks 
their approval: " How does it work?" You 
may prove the theory, they don't care so 
much about that. They prefer to know the 
results. The inventor of a new mowing 
machine may explain all about its cogs, 
draft and cutting bar; but the business-like 
farmer simply says to him, " That's all very 
well. Your story is pleasing and your ma- 
chine is beautiful; but here is a field of grass. 
Drive in with your mower, and let us see the 
swath it cuts." Now, unless the swath is 
satisfactory, the fine story and the beautiful 
machine won't amount to much. The farmer 
will tell him to drive on. 

Just so the world asks, what results have 
you to show for your Christianity? Its doc- 
trines and morals are beautiful; the proof 
that it has come from God is perfect, as an 



WHA T HAS IT DONE ? 121 

argument; but what effect does it produce 
on the lives of those who receive it? Does 
it make them better or worse? Does it pro- 
duce charity instead of envy, love instead of 
hatred, and kindness instead of cruelty or 
contrariwise? 

These questions need only to be asked. 
The whole world knows the answer. But 
you may never have considered how strong 
and full the answer becomes as we look into 
the great changes which Christianity has 
made in the world. We may be very sure 
at the outset that no argument would amount 
to much in its favor, if it were found to be 
true that our religion had been a curse to the 
world. Suppose that, as the apostles and 
other early preachers of the gospel went 
from city to city establishing churches, it 
had been found, that those who before had 
been honest became theives, and that per- 
sons who before had been pure became im- 
moral. Suppose it had been found that 
those who had been industrious became 
idlers as soon as they became Christians, and 
that some who before had been sober forth- 
with became drunkards. Suppose, in short, 



122 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

that degradation and sin had increased in 
every place where these preachers planted 
churches. How much would any argument 
for the inspiration of such a religion amount 
to? You know and I know that people 
would have said long ago, " Your Christian 
theory is all right; but the results don't 
match. We want to see fruits which cor- 
respond. ,, 

The argument from results is stronger than 
any other; so also it is the one to which 
Christian people turn with greatest delight. 
They appeal with joy to the great things 
which the religion of Christ has done for the 
world. When Christ came the world seemed 
to be given over to a reign of cruelty and 
lust. Among the Jews the forms of religion 
were observed, but without heart or sin- 
cerity. Elsewhere throughout the Roman 
empire paganism was supreme. The people 
had hundreds of gods, — gods for their lusts 
as well as gods for their virtues. They had 
altars and temples consecrated to gods of 
drunkenness and goddesses of lust. The 
state of morals among the people was just 
what might be expected under such circum- 



WHA T HAS IT DONE ? 123 

stances. The distinctions between purity 
and impurity seemed to be blotted out. The 
people became like the false gods of lust 
which they worshipped. An early Church 
historian is compelled to use language, in 
describing their daily vices, such as it would 
be improper for me to repeat to you. Some 
of the greatest orators and philosophers of 
Rome were guilty of such crimes against 
morality, and even against nature, as would 
shut them out of all decent society to-day. 
Plutarch says that most of the ancient phil- 
osophers practiced a horrible and unnamable 
vice. Any person who has read even a little 
of Roman history knows what lives of de- 
bauchery the emperors led. Such being the 
example set by those who were high in po- 
sition, what must have been the state of 
morals at large? 

It was an age filled with heartless cruelties. 
The very pleasures of the people were 
butcheries. Gladiatorial shows were as 
common then as base-ball matches are now. 
Vast theatres were built which would accom- 
modate thousands; one of them had seats 
for 385,000 people. The ruins of some of 



124 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

them are still standing — monuments of the 
heartlessness of the age which built them. 
Wars of conquest were waged almost con- 
stantly, and the poor captives were brought 
in droves to the principal cities. Droves of 
them were sold into slavery. Other droves 
of them were put in training as gladiators. 
Then, on great occasions, the people used 
to rush en masse \ men, women and children, 
to see these poor gladiators hew each other 
to pieces, as they were compelled to do. 
Sometimes that sort of sport would be kept 
up for days together. One is compelled to 
ask, again and again, as he reads their his- 
tory, what the hearts of the people could 
have been made of, that they could enjoy 
and even demand such pleasures. 

But people who have such hearts won't 
stop with compelling their prisoners to 
slaughter each other. People who delight 
in murder will take a hand in it themselves. 
So we find they did. Whenever they tired 
of one of their emperors they killed him. 
Very few of their rulers, from the unhappy 
Julius onward for centuries, died a natural 
death. When an unnatural mother did not 



WHA T HAS IT DONE ? 125 

want the trouble of raising her child, she 
murdered it, and such was the state of public 
opinion, both at Athens and at Rome, that 
she need not so much as hide her crime 
against God. 

The murder of new-born infants was no 
crime against the laws of man, and was 
frightfully common. Their prominent au- 
thors do not condemn, they even commend 
the practice. Slavery of the most horrible 
kind was everywhere common. Any pris- 
oner of war might be sold into slavery. 
Men of great ability and culture, and women 
of the highest refinement, were driven away 
to die in slavery. When any slave had 
grown old and helpless, his master might 
kill him outright or turn him off, like a 
worn-out canal horse, to die. A father 
might sell his own children into slavery or 
kill them as he chose. The Roman Empire 
was drenched with blood — blood of war, 
blood of suicide, blood of fratricide, blood of 
infanticide, blood of every kind of murder. 

Among such people charity in the true 
sense was impossible. Of course they built 
no asylums for the insane, for orphans, or for 



126 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

the infirm. They had a shorter and more 
radical way of disposing of their supernu- 
merary orphans, lunatics and paupers. When 
they were too much in the way they killed 
them. I cannot, according to my plan, bur- 
den these short talks with references and 
proofs. If any of you are interested to 
pursue the subject further you will find 
abundant facts in such books as Uhlhorn's 
Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism. 
In briefer and more condensed form you 
will find many more facts than I have given 
you, in the tenth chapter of Mcllvaine's 
Evidences of Christianity. 

This picture of the heathen world, of 
which I have given you only an outline, is, I 
assure you, underdrawn rather than over- 
drawn. It represents what human philos- 
ophy, without divine grace, could do for the 
world. 

It was into such a state of things that 
Paul, as the apostle to the Gentiles, was sent 
to carry the Gospel. That state of things 
was common in all of the countries of the 
Roman empire. That meant all of the 
countries bordering on the Mediterranean 
sea, or nearly the whole civilized world. 



WHA T HAS IT DONE t 127 

What effect did Christianity have on these 
people? Did they become worse or better? 
Were there more murders committed, or did 
the murders grow less? Did people become 
more impure, if that had been possible, or 
did they, as they received the Gospel, for- 
sake their impurities? Did mothers learn to 
love their infants less and cast them away in 
greater numbers, or did they at once begin * 
to cherish them and look with horror on 
their own past cruelties? 

We have the best opportunities to know, 
for Christianity spread very rapidly. Dur- 
ing the first century it founded churches and 
multiplied its converts in most of the chief 
cities of the empire, and even under the 
shadow of Caesar's palace. You and I know 
that these early Christians were taught to 
forsake their idols as they would forsake the 
worship of devils; that they were taught to 
be kind to each other, to bear each other's 
burdens, to provide for the poor and the 
weak; that they were taught that they must 
at once abandon all of the impure practices 
which their idolatry had permitted; that 
they must be honest, pure, truthful — hus- 



128 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

bands loving their wives and wives honoring 
their husbands; parents must be gentle to- 
wards their children, not provoking them to 
wrath, and that all must render obedience to 
the government as loyal citizens, whenever 
the demands of the government were not 
contrary to the laws of God. 

Scattered through the Acts of the Apos- 
tles, and through the various epistles of the 
New Testament, we catch glimpses of the 
struggle which these people underwent in 
throwing off their idolatry, their former 
impurities and cruelties, and stepping up 
into the purity of the Gospel. Living at a 
time when the masses practiced vices which 
are to-day esteemed heinous, and all their 
life-time, before, accustomed to think lightly 
of such things, it is little wonder that some 
of them made serious mistakes. But the 
thing of interest to us is that they were com- 
pelled to give these practices up. Their re- 
ligious teachers do not ease their consciences, 
but rebuke them sharply, and exhort the 
Churches to turn them out unless they re- 
pent and thoroughly reform. Such cases 
were exceptional, though they may have 



WHA T HAS IT DONE ? 129 

been frequent. Faithfully recorded, they 
are a proof that the record is genuine. From 
the nature of the case we know that such 
instances must have occurred; but no im- 
poster would ever have told of them. They 
who joined these young churches were com- 
pelled at once to live a new life — to breathe 
a new atmosphere. 

We have a most interesting testimony by 
a high pagan authority concerning the sort 
of life those early Christians lived. It was 
written by the Roman governor of Bith- 
ynia about the year 107 A. D. He found 
the Christians increasing in his province so 
rapidly that the altars of the heathen gods 
were in danger of being deserted. Yet, as 
he could not find the least fault with the 
character of these Christians, he was in 
doubt how to deal with them. So he writes 
a letter to his emperor, Trajan, describing 
the character of the Christians, and asking 
what he should do. In his letter, he says: 
"The guilt of these Christians they confess 
to be this: that they are accustomed to meet 
on a stated day, before light, and to sing in 
concert a hymn to Christ as God; they bind 



130 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS, 

themselves by an oath, not for the perpetra- 
tion of any wickedness, but that they will 
not commit any theft, robbery or adultery, 
nor violate their word, nor refuse to restore 
anything committed to their trust." 

And this is the testimony of a pagan ruler: 
The only " guilt " he could find in them was 
that they would meet and worship Christ. 
The "oath" which he refers to was doubtless 
the Christian covenant into which they en- 
tered. A Roman governor, anxious to find 
some charge on which to convict them, can 
not find that they violate their covenant in 
any particular. They do not steal; they are 
not unclean, nor do they break their word. 
How strangely pure and holy must such a 
society have seemed in the midst of the 
heathen impurities of that age! 

This little glimpse of Christian character 
which we get through the eye of a heathen, 
represents, we know, the true state of the 
thousands of Christians who were every- 
where multiplying in the Roman empire. 

About the opening of the fpurth century 
(312 A. D.) they had become very numer- 
ous, and were numbered perhaps by the mil- 



WHA T HAS IT DONE ? 131 

lion. Many of them, like other Roman 
citizens, were compelled to serve in the 
armies of the empire. Constantine, who 
was one of the prominent Roman leaders, 
and who soon after became emperor, had a 
great many of these Christians in his army. 
While himself still a pagan, he could not 
help observing and remarking upon the 
great difference between these Christian sol- 
diers and the rest of his army. While the 
others were turbulent, boisterous and disor- 
derly, they were peaceful, orderly and faith- 
ful in their conduct. Many have supposed 
that the example of these orderly Christian 
soldiers led their general to respect their 
belief, and influenced him to become a 
Christian himself, quite as much as the 
famous vision in which he saw the cross. 
However that may be, Constantine's testi- 
mony to the character of the Christians of 
that day remains. When men became 
Christians they became orderly and aban- 
doned their immoralities. 

By this time the Christian element of the 
empire had become so numerous that it be- 
gan to have its influence in the shaping of 



132 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

laws, as it had long been a power in silently 
molding sentiment. Gradually the evils 
which had prevailed under pagan laws were 
reformed. Slaves began to have some rights 
which masters were bound to respect. The 
laws began to recognize and protect little 
children; Christian women excited respect 
by the modesty of their dress and the purity 
of their demeanor. "What women there are 
among these Christians!" exclaimed the as- 
tonished pagan Libanius, as he beheld their 
purity and their fearlessness, even in the 
presence of death. Gladiatorial shows, in 
time, were abolished by law. Charities of 
one form and another grew up into public 
notice, so that instead of slaughtering the 
helpless and infirm, they began to be ten- 
derly cared for in asylums, as we see to-day. 
The little children who had been abandoned 
by their heartless heathen parents, were 
gathered up and cared for by kind-hearted 
Christians, who had learned their spirit of 
love from Him who said, " Suffer the little 
children to come unto me, and forbid them 
not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. " 



WHA T HAS IT DONE ? 133 

So the orphan asylums of the world were 
started. The spirit of charity and benevo- 
lence breathed forth from these Christian 
bosoms and affected the world at large. 
Cyprian (bishop of Carthage 248 A. D.) 
easily collected, in his church, five thousand 
dollars, in order to help the Numidian bishop 
in ransoming prisoners. In the time of the 
persecutions of the Emperor Decius, the 
church at Rome, alone, supported fifteen 
hundred poor persons, widows and children. 
The same spirit of love and benevolence 
prevailed throughout the world among 
Christians. Many other examples might be 
given. Prisoners were ransomed with the 
money freely contributed by Christians. 
The liberty of slaves was purchased. Or- 
phans were tenderly cared for. In times of 
pestilence, when the heathen abandoned even 
their own relatives to die, Christian churches 
were turned into hospitals and church mem- 
bers went everywhere among the suffering. 
The heathen looked on in astonishment. 
The world had seen nothing like it before. 
A new principle had been introduced, which 
taught people to love and do for others, even 



134 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

at the sacrifice of property and life. Among 
the heathen, the poor, the weak and the 
oppressed had been only despised. Chris- 
tians remembered and acted on the teaching 
of their Master: " Blessed are the poor, for 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven. " 

And the thing to which I call your atten- 
tion, especially young people, is this: These 
great reformations were brought about dis- 
tinctly by Christianity. They were not the 
result of some gradual development, working 
at the same time in the church and out of it. 
These new ideas of tenderness and gentle- 
ness toward humanity, did not come at the 
same time to some Christians and to some 
pagans. They sprang up into full life and 
bloom among Christians, while the pagan 
world was still continuing its practices of 
cruelty and legalized murder. The pagan 
world, separated by a distinct line from all 
these Christian practices, first sneered, then 
wondered, then admired, and presently be- 
gan to yield to the reign of love. 

These things are true, on the testimony 
of pagan rulers like Pliny and Constantine 
before his conversion, and on the testimony 



WHA T HAS IT D ONE ? 1 36 

of historians like Gibbon and Hume. "Do 
men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of this- 
tles? Even so every good tree bringeth 
forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth 
forth evil fruit; wherefore by their fruits ye 
shall know them. " 

In what civilized nation to-day would 
people tolerate the murder of infants or the 
bloody sights of a gladiatorial arena? In 
what civilized nation would unclean women 
be honored as priestesses at religious altars? 
What civilized people would to-day honor 
any man as a philosopher who would advo- 
cate these atrocities? The more you study 
the world's history, the more you will be 
impressed that wonderful progress has been 
made in the world's morals. You will be 
impressed, too, with the fact that these 
great changes have been brought about by 
Christianity. These great changes have 
been made only in those countries where the 
religion of Christ has been received. "By 
their fruits ye shall know them. " 

Note.— The fearful exposures of London vices, recently 
made, are no contradiction. The exposure of those vices excites 
universal horror and condemnation. But in the pagan world 
such deeds did not even excite remark, and would not have been 
esteemed criminal. To-day there is virtue to correct them ; then 
there was not virtue sufficient to have condemned them. 



X. 



FROM A NAKED SAVAGE TO A 
CULTURED PRINCE, 



EN our last talk we looked at the fruits 
which the teachings of Jesus early began 
to bear throughout the Roman empire. We 
found that persons, who before had been 
unclean and cruel, dropped those evil ways 
as soon as they became Christians. We 
heard the testimony of two Roman pagans in 
high authority, one a governor of a province, 
and the other a great general who after- 
wards became emperor. We saw how, as 
the number of these pure-lived Christians 
increased, they began, by gentle influences, 
to effect great changes in national customs 
and laws. 

This evening I will ask you to look at the 
fruits which Christianity is still bearing in the 
world, wherever its gentle touch is felt. But 
first I want to answer an objection which 
you frequently see in newspaper articles, 



FROM SAVAGERY TO CULTURE. 137 

copied from infidel lectures. It is said that 
the Christian Church has, sometimes; itself 
been a persecuting power; that wicked men 
have done deeds of violence in the name of 
the Church; that the Church, at one time, 
opposed the advance of science. 

The trouble has arisen because people 
have refused to see that there is a difference 
between Christianity and the Church. When 
the organized Christian Church numbered 
only twelve members, and the Lord himself 
was its Pastor, there was one Judas in it. 
Christianity (or the teachings of Christ) 
even at that early day, was one thing; the 
Church was another. Christianity was per- 
fect; the Church was imperfect. Judas tried 
to overthrow Christianity. He betrayed its 
Teacher and Founder. Now, no honest 
person, with a grain of sense, would hold 
Christianity responsible for the treachery of 
a person who did his best to destroy it. It 
would be just as sensible to hold our laws 
responsible for the deeds of a murderer. The 
law condemns murder, and is not responsi- 
ble though many break it. Christianity con- 
demns sin, and is not responsible for the 



138 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

deeds of any Judas, or any number of Ju- 
dases who creep into its camp. 

It is true that, after a few centuries, when 
Christianity had won many thousands of 
converts, and when the emperor on the 
throne professed conversion, then multitudes 
who were unworthy flocked into the Chris- 
tian churches. There are always plenty of 
unworthy persons who will join any organi- 
zation which is popular. Popularity is a 
power, and persons there are, who are will- 
ing to be hypocrites, if so they can increase 
their power. Men of bad hearts and unholy 
lives did become church members; many 
such, by scheming, did become high officers 
of the Church. When in office they did 
things over which not only Christianity, but 
common morality wept. But Christianity 
was no more responsible for these deeds than 
it was responsible for the crimes of Judas. 
The principle is the same, whether there is 
one Judas or a thousand. 

During all the long period which many, 
high in authority, were doing such wickedness 
in the name of the Church, however, there 
were thousands and hundreds of thousands 



FROM SAVAGERY TO CULTURE. 139 

in whose hearts and lives the religion of 
Christ was constantly bearing its fruits of 
gentleness, purity and peace. It was not 
Christianity, but those who had usurped the 
powers of the Church, and who used them 
for personal ends, who were responsible for 
the crimes done in the name of religion. 
Nor were the great masses of the church 
members in sympathy with their crimes. 
For the most part they were ignorant of 
them. When they knew they lamented 
them; but they were powerless to change 
them. When Luther arose, the way in 
which he was supported by the masses, 
proved that their hearts were not in sym- 
pathy with the corruptions of Rome. The 
sympathy which, throughout Europe, rallied 
to support the protest of the reformers, 
shows what fruit the genuine spirit of Chris- 
tianity had been preparing in the hearts of 
the people. I cannot lead you further into 
this thought. I can only hope, young peo- 
ple, that you will pursue it in your private 
reading and reflection, and that you will 
remember it when you hear anyone assailing 
Christianity for the corruptions of the med- 



140 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS, 

iaeval Church. Christianity has never been 
corrupt, nor has it been corrupting; but, in 
spite of it, some corruptions have crept into 
the Church from the very beginning. But 
all of the hypocrisies of men have never 
been able to prevent the light which is in 
the teachings of Jesus from shining. 

It would be very interesting, if there were 
time, to trace the conquests of Christianity; 
to show what changes it made throughout 
Europe; how it transformed the barbarians 
of Germany and lifted up the rude tribes of 
Britain. But this is what our religion has 
been doing from the beginning, and I want 
you, therefore, to look at some facts in the 
same line which will, perhaps, be the more 
impressive, because they are very recent or 
now in progress. You know it is sometimes 
said that all of these results would have 
happened just the same without any Christ 
or His teachings. But, it is either ignorance 
or falsehood which prompts such a state- 
ment. 

There are those still living who remember 
what the Sandwich Islands were at the 
opening of this century. Terrible reports 



FROM SAVAGERY TO CULTURE. 141 

of the cruelty and degradation of the Isl- 
anders used to be brought to America by 
the navigators who touched there. From 
one cause and another the American Board 
determined to send missionaries there. In 
1820 seven missionaries and their wives 
landed on one of the Islands. They found 
the people naked, cruel, and utterly immoral 
and untruthful; savages, who would kill each 
other for human sacrifice. There were no 
civilizing influences, no books of philosophy 
or poetry, and no knowledge of science 
among them to work any change in their 
customs or character. The missionaries and 
their Bibles had the field to themselves. 
They alone stood on the side of morality 
and civilization. 

Well, what were the results? We are en- 
quiring after the fruits. What could Chris- 
tianity do for such a people? The results 
were little short of a miracle. For a few 
years, while the missionaries were learning 
the language, progress was, of course, slow. 
Then the Pentacostal fires broke forth. The 
people flocked in tens of thousands to hear 
the truth and were converted in thousands. 



142 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

They clothed themselves decently. In a 
short time they began to build churches and 
schools. Their language was reduced to 
writing. They had the Bible and books of 
science in their own tongue. All of the 
appliances of civilization followed, until, to- 
day, they are an orderly, civilized people, 
having regularly established laws, beautiful 
homes, schools of higher learning and 
churches. 

A little incident was told by Rev. Dr. 
Gulick, who had been a missionary among 
the Micronesian Islands. He was visiting 
at the Sandwich Islands a few years ago and 
during a talk which he gave to the people, 
he displayed some little idols of the people 
among whom he had been laboring. In- 
stantly his audience broke into a laugh. So 
thoroughly had these people been redeemed, 
whose fathers and mothers only a few years 
before had been naked, idol-worshipping 
pagans, that such idols appeared utterly rid- 
iculous to them. 

If you want a story more wonderful than 
any Arabian Nights' tale, read the full ac- 
count of those wonderful days when a 



FROM SAVAGERY TO CULTURE. 143 

little handful of missionaries were leading 
these naked heathen out of darkness into 
the light 

The first King of the Islands whom the 
missionaries saw, came more than once from 
the surf to Mr. Ruggles' house, with his five 
wives, all in a state of nature, so far as any 
clothing was concerned. Mr. Ruggles finally 
told the king of his impropriety; next time 
he came dressed. He had on a pair of silk 
stockings and a hat! He and his people 
had no more shame or modesty than so 
many brutes. That was no further back 
than 1820. 

A few years ago the king of these Islands, 
one of the successors of that naked savage, 
journeyed through this country and was 
everywhere received with honor, not only as 
a monarch, but as a refined and courteous 
gentleman. 

Such are the results of the Gospel, my 
young friends. "By its fruits ye shall know 
it." 

But other changes, quite as great and 
wonderful in proportion, are taking place 
in other though smaller islands of the Pacific 



1U TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

ocean. Where only a few years ago sailors 
did not dare to land for fear of being eaten; 
where the inhabitants were warlike, naked 
savages, to-day there are churches, schools 
and good order. The people are clothed 
and live obedient to law. There are those 
still living who have dined on human roasts, 
who are to-day, according to abundant tes- 
timony, exemplary Christians, and so, of 
course, good citizens. 

Not long ago a ship was wrecked on one 
of these islands, whose inhabitants had once 
been savages and cannibals. The survivors 
crawled about from hiding place to hiding 
place in great terror until they saw, from an 
eminence, a friendly church spire. Then 
they laughed at their fears. Church spires 
mean something even to godless sailors. 
What has brought about this great change 
in many of the Micronesian Islands? A few 
faithful missionaries with their Bibles. And 
it is an interesting fact that the first mission- 
aries to these people were sent out by the 
Sandwich Islands only thirty years after 
they themselves first heard of Christ. That 
is the spirit of the Gospel: such are its 



FROM SAVAGERY TO CULTURE. 145 

results. In many of the Gilbert Islands or 
Caroline Islands to-night your life and prop- 
erty would be as safe as in our own city. 
What is the reason? Oh, there are church 
spires there. " By their fruits ye shall know 
them. ,, 

Now let me ask you a question : What 
other book could the missionaries have car- 
ried with them, leaving their Bible behind, 
and produced the same result ? Suppose 
they had left their Bibles in Honolulu or 
Boston, and had taken along instead Vol- 
taire and Paine? Suppose they could have 
taken Mr. Ingersoll's lectures, filled with 
brilliant blasphemy, and could have added 
a volume of Herbert Spencer's philosophy, 
and another from Huxley on Protoplasm? 
Suppose they had taught the contents of 
these books to those naked savages? Do 
you think that the teachings of these books 
would have led them to a change of heart 
and life? Would they have learned to 
restrain their passions from Mr. Ingersoll, 
who teaches that God is cruel and that 
human parents are cruel if they restrain 
their children? Would they have learned 



146 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

reverence from Mr. Spencer, who teaches 
that there probably is no God; or if there 
is, that He is forever unknowable? Would 
they have learned self-respect and decency 
from Mr. Huxley, who would teach them 
that they are lineal descendants of monkeys? 
You know, young people, that there is 
nothing in this kind of literature to change 
the heart for the better, to produce such 
reformations as we see among these Island- 
ers. Has anyone ever left the Bible behind 
and gone among savages with the best lit- 
erature of human genius — like the poems 
of Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott, or the 
philosophy of Bacon and the astronomy of 
Herschel or Kepler — and with such, even 
noble literature, produced a reformation from 
naked barbarism to modern civilization ? 
Never! It could not be done. May be 
some will say, " It never has been tried ? " 
That is true, and it never will be tried, for 
two reasons: No one is foolish enough to 
think it could succeed; and everyone who 
cares enough for the heathen to go among 
them and attempt their reformation is a 
lover of the Bible. No book or books in 



FROM SAVAGERY TO CULTURE. Ul 

the world have ever taught people to go 
forth to redeem savages but the Bible. 

The Bible does teach its believers to love 
even naked savages; it does teach them to 
attempt their redemption; it does promise 
them success; and strange as it may seem, 
the success follows wherever Bible truths are 
taught. 

I have given you only samples of the great 
work which is going on the wide world 
around. In these days missionaries are like 
the British empire — the sun never sets on 
them. They are on all continents and on 
nearly all islands; and wherever they are 
faithfully teaching Christ, there you will find 
those who have been unclean becoming pure; 
those who have been thieves becoming hon- 
est; those who have been murderers becom- 
ing gentle and even noble. 

Such are the changes of heart and charac- 
ter which go everywhere with the Bible and 
Christianity. There will be time enough for 
us to throw away our Bibles and accept infi- 
del lectures when it can be shown that the 
savages of one little island have been changed 
into civilized beings by reading those lee- 



148 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

tures; or even when it can be shown that 
they have changed one thief or adulterer or 
murderer into a good citizen. If human 
genius, whether in the form of poetry, art, 
science or philosophy, or all combined, has 
never been able to produce such reforma- 
tions, then it is safe to say that it is because 
it cannot. It must be, therefore, that some 
higher Power than that of human genius is 
in the teachings which do produce these 
changes. That higher Power does always 
go with the Bible, for where the Bible goes 
these changes are wrought. Or if it shall 
be said that the Bible itself is only a product 
of human thought, then I ask why has 
human thought never produced but one? 
Why does not some one immortalize himself 
by writing another book which shall have 
power to change savage hordes into civilized 
nations in the space of a single generation? 
Here is a chance for immortality, even for 
those who deny Bible immortality. Let 
them write a book which shall produce 
results like those of the Bible, and millions 
will make them immortal by affection and 
grateful memory. 



XI. 



WHERE DID SUCH LIFE AND CHAR- 
ACTER COME FROM? 



VrPHERE is one fact, young people, which 
§gl is an everlasting miracle. That is the 
spotless and perfect character of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, which is to-day and will be 
forever in the world as an ideal. A miracle 
is something supernatural — something be- 
yond the reach of man's power. You and I 
cannot walk on the sea nor still its tempests 
with a word; we cannot change water into 
wine, nor can we multiply five loaves into 
five thousand. These things are as much 
beyond our reach as the stars. But they 
are no more impossible than it is for us 
to live such a life as Jesus Christ lived. We 
can look to Him as our example, but we can 
never hope to equal the moral beauty, the 
strength and the unerring wisdom of His 
character. Even those who teach the possi- 
bility of human perfection, do not for a mo- 



150 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

ment claim any such thing. They teach 
that God holds us to account only according 
to our light or understanding. If we live 
up to our views of duty, though they may 
be very imperfect, yet, in God's sight, that 
constitutes a blameless life. 

But the life at which we are now looking 
does not ask for any such allowance. The 
perfection of which I am now speaking is no 
such modified affair. The claim is that for 
more than eighteen hundred years the world 
has had before it the example of a character 
which was perfect in its strength and wis- 
dom, as well as in its intentions. There has 
been one such life and only one. Such a 
life as that must forever be, in the highest 
sense, a miracle. They who deny the mira- 
cles of restoration and resurrection, must 
still account for this supreme miracle of 
character and life. 

No one claims that there has ever been 
any other absolutely perfect life on earth. 
Millions, as you know very well, do claim 
that there has been one perfect life among 
men. If there has been only one, and if all 
men at once acknowledge the impossibility 



WHERE DID IT COME FROM? 151 

of ever reaching such a standard again, then 
we must conclude that He who could live so 
far above us while living among us, is divine. 

It is certainly worth our thought to con- 
sider some of the few ways in which the 
character of Christ is different from that of 
all men. 

You all know, when you reflect upon it a 
moment, how impossible it is for people 
to live in one age in such a way that those 
who follow them cannot find fault with 
some things which they did, which they con- 
sidered perfectly right at the time. We 
reverence our Puritan ancestors, and they 
certainly deserve all of the reverence we 
give them. But they did some things which 
they thought were right, which we would 
consider very wrong. In other words, the 
moral standards of people change from age 
to age, and some things which seemed right 
once do not appear so under greater light. 

Now we look back at the character of 
Christ through all of the changes of more 
than eighteen centuries. We can see that 
those about Him were sinners. But there 
is absolutely nothing in His life which the 



152 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS, 

clearer light of any century since then can 
find fault with. 

Of other great men we are compelled to 
say, " They lived fairly according to the 
light they had. " Of their faults we say, 
"Oh, no one then considered such a thing 
to be wrong." 

But we are in no case called upon to make 
any such allowance for Christ. Somehow, 
He succeeded in so living that His life had 
nothing which any age would discover to be 
a fault. The remarkable thing is that He, 
of all the good and great, is the only One 
who ever did live so. He lived for all ages 
and for all mankind. 

Another very strange thing about His life 
is the fact that no passing of centuries, or 
change of place, makes any difference with 
the beauty of His words. No other person 
ever lived, who talked as much as Christ, 
who did not say some things which lost their 
beauty and their force as soon as the age in 
which he lived had gone by. This has been 
true of the men of greatest genius. John 
Milton is only two centuries back of our own 
time. Yet he wrote and uttered some things 



WHERE DID IT COME FROM? 153 

which lost their application with the genera- 
tion in which he lived. Nobody cares for 
them now. So nearly all writers and teach- 
ers betray their prejudices in favor of one 
nation or another, of one class or another. 
If they are Frenchmen, they can hardly 
avoid saying some things which will be of- 
fensive to the Germans; if they are English, 
they are sure to show it somewhere, in a way 
which will shut out the sympathy of Rus- 
sians. Or, again, it is a rare thing to find 
one who can speak in such a way as to win 
the sympathies of both rich and poor, of 
both learned and ignorant, of both the aged 
and children. 

But the words of Christ lose none of their 
beauty as the centuries go by. There is 
nothing in them which depends for its inter- 
est on time or place. They were listened to 
by thousands with delight when he spoke 
them: they are read by millions with delight 
at the present day. They are equally loved 
by men of the most different tastes and of 
the most various nationalities. They are 
studied with equal delight in the palaces of 
the rich and the cottages of the poor. Men 



154 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS, 

whose lives have been given to study delight 
in their wisdom, and little children, who 
know nothing of study, are delighted with 
their beauty. There is sympathy in them 
for all proper joys; there is consolation for 
every hour of woe. The words of Christ, 
alone, speak to all ages and all conditions 
of men, in such a way as to be equally for- 
cible in every age and to every condition. 

The wisest of human beings are, some- 
times, in perplexity and doubt. We have 
recently had a conspicuous example. Mr. 
Gladstone is acknowledged to be one of the 
wisest of living men, yet his warmest ad- 
mirer must admit that he has recently been 
in great perplexity, not knowing, with all of 
his wisdom, which way to turn. Or we 
may come to more personal matters. What 
person ever lived without sometimes doubt- 
ing which way to go, or what, under the 
circumstances, it was best for him to do? 
There is no one of our acquaintance, there 
is none whose life has been written, who 
does not somewhere, if not frequently, show 
that he is perplexed. 



WHERE DID IT COME FROM? 155 

Christ was different from all men, in that 
He never was in doubt. Four different 
authors have given us the history of his life. 
In those histories we see him surrounded, 
now by friends and now by foes; sometimes 
in great popularity and sometimes in great 
danger; frequently compelled to answer 
without a moment's preparation, where a 
wrong word would have been fatal to His 
mission, and as often compelled to act where 
a wrong move would have been prematurely 
fatal to His life; all this time carrying a 
sense of such responsibility as never rested 
on the head of any prime minister of an 
empire. In all of these trying circumstances 
there is not the slightest indication that He 
ever, for one moment, doubted what it was 
best to say or do. And what is still more 
strange, though his life has been searched 
for eighteen centuries with the lighted can- 
dles of hatred, as well as with the bright light 
of friendship, no one has ever been able to 
find that He once spoke the wrong word or 
did an unwise thing. 

The best of men are sometimes weak. 
Good intentions, even when well carried out, 



]56 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS, 

do not keep any from sometimes doing 
things which he had better left undone. We 
grow wiser with years. We correct our for- 
mer judgments and regret many of our past 
failures. 

The most searching criticism cannot dis- 
cover that Jesus had any failures to correct. 
There were no indiscretions to lament, nor 
any weak judgments to be amended. If 
there had been, some of them would surely 
have found their way into the histories of 
His life. Even if we should suppose that 
Christ's friends tried to keep His faults out 
of their records, no imperfect man would 
have such perfect wisdom as to be able to 
judge infallibly what things would always, 
in all ages, be esteemed as virtues and what 
would be criticised as faults. So we may be 
sure, young people, if Christ had been in 
any respect weak like others, it would some- 
where appear in the gospels. Christ was 
not only without blame; He was also with- 
out weakness. To my mind it is one of the 
strongest proofs of His divinity that all men 
have such views of His character that even 
one weakness would be a sin, and forever 
fatal to its beauty. 



WHERE DID IT COME FROM? 157 

There is still a stronger evidence that 
Christ was pure and without even a weakness. 
In all human friends intimacy discovers some 
things which require charity and forbearance. 
We find on closer acquaintance that our 
friend's beautiful temper is marred by fret- 
fulness ; or his purpose has its times of 
wavering; or he, who seemed always before 
to be so magnanimous, is found to be sus- 
picious and jealous at times. 

But intimacy never discovered any such 
failing in Christ. Twelve men were with 
Him day and night. They saw Him when 
a weak nature would have been puffed up, 
for the people were ready to proclaim Him 
king. They saw Him when a single weak- 
ness would have betrayed itself in dejection, 
for the throng had deserted Him and all men 
were ready to spit on Him and kill Him. 
Did they find any weakness or wrong? Did 
those quick and questioning eyes see, even 
once, any hasty flashing of resentment or 
any weak display of wounded vanity? Was 
He ever in despair over broken hopes and 
faded ambitions? Never. The unbroken 
influence of His life for more than two years 



158 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

led those disciples step by step away from 
the opinion that He was only a carpenter 
from Nazareth, only the son of Mary — up 
to the confession which burst from the lips 
of Peter, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
the living God. " It would have been pos- 
sible for them to think Him a good man if 
He had sometimes made mistakes; but it 
would not have been possible for them to 
think Him " the Son of the living God " if 
they had ever detected Him in even one 
mistake. Those disciples, all but the traitor, 
proved the sincerity of their opinion by wor- 
shipping Him; by preaching His life, death, 
and resurrection; by suffering, and most of 
them by dying, for His sake. 

The best of men have times when they 
show that they are aware that they are sin- 
ners. There have been not only mistakes, 
of which they are ashamed, but positive 
sins, for which they are heart-broken and 
sorry. The nearer they get to God, and the 
more their lives correspond with His law, the 
more clearly do they see and the more deeply 
do they repent of their past sins. Aside 
from the life of Christ, there is scarcely in 



WHERE DID IT COME FROM? 159 

history so grand a character as that of the 
Hebrew prophet, Isaiah. Yet if you will 
open your Bibles to his sixth chapter, fifth 
verse, you will see how a view of his sins 
affected him. "Woe is me! for I am undone; 
because I am a man of unclean lips, and I 
dwell in the midst of a people of unclean 
lips." That is how sinful men feel when 
they see themselves in the light of God's 
perfect holiness. Job, whose character has 
the special commendation of the Almighty, 
was affected in the same way. " I have 
heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; 
but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore 
I abhor myself, and repent in dust and 
ashes." (Job xlii., 5, 6.) 

The uniform testimony of all who have 
ever come into peace with God is, that these 
words are none too strong. You have seen 
and heard it again and again during the past 
few months. You have seen those whose 
outward lives have been correct and beauti- 
ful bowing in contrition and tears, saying: 
"God be merciful to me a sinner." Some 
have felt especially their great guilt in hav- 
ing sq long rejected the love of God. 



160 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

But while seers and patriarchs, preachers 
and priests bow down in the dust and ashes 
of penitence, this strange and wonderful 
Christ never utters a word of repentance; 
His brow is never once clouded with sorrow 
on account of any sin of His own. He 
rebukes others for their sins, and they shrink 
back from the penetrating gaze of His purity. 
But no one ever thinks of saying to Him, 
"Why do you not repent of your own sins?" 
Some such thing would surely have hap- 
pened if they had discovered any sin in Him. 
But he boldly asks them, "Which of you 
convinceth me of sin?" The only conclu- 
sion that we can reach is that He was with- 
out sin. In that respect, also, He was 
unlike all others who have ever lived. 

I can only refer to one or two other 
respects, although there are many, in which 
the character of Christ is utterly in contrast 
with the purest of human lives. If any of 
you are interested to pursue the subject 
more fully, you will find the tenth chapter of 
Bushnell's Nature andtlie Supernatural most 
interesing and instructive, to which I am 
indebted for some suggestions in this talk. 



WHERE DID IT COME FROM? 161 

How did Christ manage to say such 
remarkable things of Himself without at 
once disgusting all who heard Him. "I am 
the light of the world." "Before Abraham 
was I am." "Whosoever liveth and believ- 
eth in me, though he were dead, yet shall 
he live." "My words shall never pass away." 
"I and my Father are one." "Then shall 
the Son of Man sit on the throne of His 
glory, and before Him shall be gathered all 
nations." 

Without the least hesitancy He speaks of 
Himself as equal with God, as the author of 
the final resurrection, and as the Judge who 
shall sit at the final tribunal. Others have 
sometimes made equal pretensions, but they 
have at once been dealt with as insane. 
Such they have been, unless they have been 
exposed as the most arrant imposters. But 
the strange thing is that Christ's character 
was such that He conld say such things and 
not disgust people. Thousands gathered 
about Him. Some one may say, "Yes, but 
the mob crucified Him at last." True, but 
there were doubtless many whose love and 
reverence He had who were powerless to 



162 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

help Him. But that does not affect the 
judgments of to-day, though all deserted 
Him. The millions who love Him through- 
out the world know that He was crucified. 
They know, too, how He said of Himself, 
" I am the light of the world;" " I and my 
Father are one. " People who detest every 
pretence know all this and are not repelled. 
They bow with love and adoration. How 
can this be? It is because the perfect char- 
acter of Christ supports His claim. It is not 
boasting for Him to say, " I am the light of 
the world," because that is the fact. How 
soon would any man who should utter such 
words stand exposed as a pretender! Let 
the best and the noblest try it. Their good- 
ness and greatness are well enough, as long 
as they pretend only to be human. But let 
them claim to be divine, and see how soon 
thousands would prove them sinners. Their 
goodness would be as the morning dew. 
But not only could Christ say such things 
without disgusting people; He could so utter 
them as not to be boastful; but He did more; 
He so uttered such truths as to leave the 
sweetest impress of holy simplicity and 
humility that the world has ever had. 



WHERE DID IT COME FROM? 163 

Human ambition is satisfied with the brief 
span of this life and human benevolence 
rarely looks more than a generation beyond 
it. But Christ planned a kingdom which 
should be world-wide in extent; which 
should last to the end of time; which should 
require the fidelity and even suffering of 
millions for its success; which could only be 
inaugurated by His own death, and which 
could triumph only in the distant ages, after 
He should have gone back to His home of 
light. Is it human or divine to plan in that 
way? What prince ever dreamed of such 
dominion but the Prince of Peace? What 
king ever dreamed of such a scepter but the 
King of Kings and the Lord of Lords? 
You will remember there is one touching 
little passage which tells how the woman 
breaks the alabaster box, and how Christ 
says of that act, " She did it for my burial. " 
He expected soon to die, but He expected 
also that the Gospel, which He came to 
bring, would be preached in future ages 
throughout the world, for He immediately 
adds: "Wheresoever this Gospel shall be 
preached in the whole world, there shall also 



164 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

this that this woman hath done be told for a 
memorial of her. " Did ever any other man 
provide in the same breath both for his own 
burial and for universal conquest? But the 
strange thing is, that what He then looked 
forward. to in distant ages is now being ful- 
filled before our eyes. The Gospel is being 
preached " in the whole world," and the 
fragrance of that one box of ointment has 
gone to all nations. 

Alexander and Caesar get on well enough 
with their bloody conquests for a time while 
they live; but, presently, they die, and 
their conquests cease. Jesus is crucified and 
His peaceful victories go on with greater 
power than ever; ages go by and those con- 
quests are still progressing "in all the world." 
Aud all this is just what He said should 
come to pass. Are such the results of hu- 
man foresight, or are they the fruits of a 
divine wisdom and an Almighty power? 

Whichever way we look, young people, 
we shall be more and more impressed that 
the character of Jesus Christ is not only dif- 
ferent from all other characters, but that it 
is far above the attainment of any merely 
human genius or goodness. 



WHERE DID IT COME FROM? 165 

How came that character into the world? 
As Joseph Cook has recently pointed out in 
one of his lectures, before the time of Christ 
the world had no conception of what a per- 
fect character would be. Many noble men 
had lived, but none of them had lived above 
sin and weakness. Poets and philosophers 
had been thinking and writing for ages; but 
none of them had ever succeeded in draw- 
ing the picture of what a perfect life would 
be. But when we come to Christ we find 
One who, from the beginning, is innocent 
without weakness; who, born into a home 
of poverty and surrounded by the supersti- 
tions of a superstitious age, is himself never 
superstitious; who, praised by thronging 
multitudes, is never moved by their flattery 
to one foolish act; who, cursed by enemies 
and deserted by friends, never gives way to 
resentment, never mourns a broken ambi- 
tion, and is never moved to assert the prin- 
ciple for which He stands with greater 
vehemence because He is opposed; who 
speaks for all classes of men without so 
allying himself to any as to arouse the 
resentment of others, and who speaks no 



166 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

word whose beauty perishes as years go by; 
who, unmoved, beholds the open doors 
through which He might pass to great 
worldly honor and riches, and who permits 
them to close again without so much as a 
sigh or a look of regret; who never doubts 
which way is wise, and whose judgment has 
in no particular been corrected by the scru- 
tiny of eighteen centuries; who calmly plans 
for the glory of a universal kingdom, even 
while he is preparing to die in ignominy be- 
fore that kingdom can boast the possession of 
a single city, or even of a single roof; and we 
ask, overwhelmed, as a great infidel once 
said, "by the majesty of such a character," 
can such a man be " of the earth earthy?" 
. or is He in very deed " the Lord from 
heaven. " 

Again I ask you, young people, How 
came the thought of such a character to be 
among men as it is to-day in all the earth? 
I will not affirm that Jesus Christ lived as 
the gospels say; I only ask, How came men 
by the picture of such a life? 

You see at once that Christ either lived, 
and so men simply described what they saw 



WHERE DID IT COME FROM? 167 

in Him, or else some one must have invented 
the fiction which we call " Jesus Christ. " 
But what men were there of that age, who 
coming after Homer and Hesiod, Plato and 
Euripides, Virgil and Horace, could give us 
a fiction which could so far surpass the 
power of them all? 

It is one thing for a writer to say, "I will 
draw for you the outlines of a perfect char- 
acter," and it is quite another thing for him 
to do it. When he sets his character to talk- 
ing and acting, as if among men, he bab- 
bles, falters, and is weak like others. The 
stream which flows from human genius can 
not rise higher than its source. He whose 
heart is sullied by sin has lost the power to 
perceive and tell what a sinless heart would 
feel and how a sinless man would act. 

No, no, young people. The thought is 
an impossible one. A tax gatherer, a doc- 
tor, an apostle's clerk, and a fisherman (none 
of them literary men) could not have in- 
vented a character whose majesty so far 
surpasses the grandest creations of human 
genius, They whose hearts had been soiled 
by sin could not so perfectly have discerned 



168 TALKS TO YOUNG CHRISTIANS. 

the impulses of a sinless heart. It was pos- 
sible for them to put on record the deeds of 
a sinless and perfect man only because a sin- 
less man had lived on earth. They "were 
eye-witnesses of His majesty," and they 
told what they saw; or they learned by in- 
tercourse with those who had seen His 
matchless life. 

If any infidel assails your faith, bear these 
things in mind, and ask him, " How was it 
possible for Jesus Christ to live as He did?" 



■ • v x '^vV, 







W&i^ 



tDeacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: August 2005 



PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724) 779-21 1 1 



grilfe":' 








BlBB 



^MSliM 



/^3iC 






m 

mi 



J+ G^Z, +- 



pait 






